


What's Past Is Prologue

by DreamerWisherLiar



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Anachronistic, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Love at First Sight, Meet-Cute, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage, Prostitution, Self-Defense, Stalking, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-11 22:11:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 70,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15325467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerWisherLiar/pseuds/DreamerWisherLiar
Summary: It felt like the walk took hours and yet finished in seconds, leaving her seated beside him at a dinner that passed in a similar haze of laughter and ceaseless conversation. After that everyone else moved to drinks, and card games, and gossip, and she and Athos moved from their seats but otherwise changed nothing at all.Just another take on how Athos met Anne de Breuil, how they got married, and how it all fell apart.So like two-thirds tooth-rotting fluff and one-third super-depressing angst. The warnings are mostly about Milady's past - there's no graphic scenes of underage/non-con or anything like that, just references to it.





	1. Anne

**Author's Note:**

> So if anyone's still reading this stuff, enjoy! I decided not to go with them meeting in a church, even though for all I know it's canon in the books judging by how many fics I've seen it in. I also left Athos's father alive, because otherwise I can't figure out who "quietly passed on" Catherine to Thomas. It seemed too out of character for Athos to organise that betrothal by himself.
> 
> Just so you know:
> 
> 1\. This will be as anachronistic as all hell because I know basically nothing about 17th century France (there may even be weird traces of Regency England in there because I used to really like Georgette Heyer)
> 
> 2\. This will be consistent with the series only as far as I can remember the details. I'm obsessive, but that doesn't always mean I'm accurate.
> 
> 3\. This will not be at all consistent with the books because I last read them when I was 15 and rage quite because of what dicks all the Musketeers were.
> 
> But if you're fine with all that, enjoy!

The first time Anne met the Comte de la Fère’s oldest son and heir was also the night she stabbed a vicomte with a hairpin.

The week had started very promisingly. She had gained an invite to the old General’s extended hunting party through a distant “cousin Jean” who was of course no such thing. He was just a younger son of minor gentility with a great many debts and at least one secret he had not been careful enough to conceal from a woman with sharp eyes and a sharper mind. 

While they were supposedly there to hunt, it wasn’t one of the ribald men-and-mistresses-only hunting parties Anne had heard of (and, at least once, attended). The General was no longer young, and it perfectly suited his idea of hunting to spend a couple of hours a day riding sedately around and shooting at birds before returning to his estate and relaxing with thirty of his closest friends and hangers-on. Accordingly, most of those invited had brought wives, sisters, and, yes, cousins. The company might be somewhat dull, but the weather was splendid, the wine flowed freely, and the hunting had been satisfactory that day.

Anne’s own hunting was going poorly, however. All she seemed able to hit was game she would much rather have missed. Case in point.

“Your mouth is like berries,” the Vicomte de Joubert said earnestly, gazing at her with wet eyes. He elaborated on this theme for at least five minutes: the types of berries the colour of her mouth reminded him of; the beauty of said berries that was of course nothing to her beauty; how he had always loved the taste and had no doubt her lips tasted better still; but, of course, he did not mean to offend. When Anne drew in a breath to reply, he spoke over her and went on, enumerating the many other foods her lips were most likely superior to, and possibly putting her off eating for life.

He was a short, rotund man, more than twice her age, and married to a sour-faced woman who would probably gut him with her parasol if she had any idea of what he was saying right now. He seemed aware of this himself – he’d held his tongue, simply breathing rather heavily and looking at Anne somewhat inappropriately, until they began this tour and left his spouse’s sightline.

Despite the flowery compliments, Anne was an expert at recognising what could be gotten from a man, and nothing at all could be gotten from this one. Despite his interest, he was far too scared of his wife to keep a mistress, and certainly far too scared to spend his rapidly dwindling resources on expensive gifts for that mistress. He didn’t seem the sort to have useful or valuable secrets, he was not a socially-adept man whose connections she could exploit, and subtle questioning had made her reasonably sure that robbing his house would be a waste of effort and expertise even if she could get past his eagle-eyed wife to be there. Overall, Anne was certain that if she succumbed to what he no doubt thought was his rakish charm, the only thing she would get out of the Vicomte de Joubert would be a rather disgusting and uncomfortable ten minutes (if that), a heavy snoring weight to extract herself from beneath, and the meagre contents of his coin purse. Simply to stem her own boredom, she’d already temporarily borrowed that purse and examined it while he delivered a soliloquy about her hair, and found it had more gaming writs than coins.

It was a shame for him he had nothing to offer her, and a shame for Anne she hadn’t fully realised this before politely accepting his offer of a tour around the General’s gardens, and just a shame in general they were both wasting their time with this nonsense when all the wine was back with the others inside.

“Your voice is like the song of birds,” the vicomte continued, leading her down the pathway that circled around the lake. The late-afternoon sun warmed her back and the grounds were so beautiful that it would have been very pleasant if not for the company. “I do not know which bird particularly, perhaps a lark. Yes! Of course! That is it. A lark, surely the brightest and most beautiful of all birds -”

By Anne’s estimate it had been something like twenty minutes since she’d had the opportunity to do more than murmur polite demurs while he battered her with a never-ending torrent of uniformly stupid praise. She felt her grip on her temper start to fray. She was starting to get a headache. “Are you sure you’ve heard me speak enough to make such a judgment?” she inquired, keeping her tone arch so he didn’t realise she was mocking him.

The vicomte launched into another speech – any man would recognise her voice as that of a lark’s after one shining word, one beautifully articulated phrase. “I could sing the praises of your voice for hours, my dear. In fact -”

Oh, dear God in heaven, Anne thought, by now utterly disgusted. “I don’t doubt for a second that you could, sir,” she drawled. The best thing about the vicomte, she thought, was that his ego was so overdeveloped he’d never suspect she was mocking him – but then, when it came to comparing his positive qualities, so far she wasn’t exactly spoilt for choice. His negative qualities were far more noticeable. It was bad enough to be unattractive and lacking in charm, but being poor on top of that was really just inexcusable.

Anne had never been particularly interested in birds, but listening to a paean about the beauty of larks gave her a fervent desire to see one. And shoot it. The vicomte beamed at her as he declaimed and she thought she’d quite like to shoot him as well (it had been a long day). “It’s impossible to imagine anything in nature that can truly be compared to your beauty, of course,” he concluded finally.

“If it’s impossible to imagine, it’s a wonder you can describe it so comprehensively.” For a second, she was sure she heard a sound, a stifled chuckle, but when she glanced around quickly, there was no one there.

The victomte puffed out his chest, or tried to at least. “The words simply come to me as I gaze upon your loveliness, like manna from Heaven. I pride myself on the poetry of my soul, mademoiselle.”

“I myself have always viewed poetry as more of an affliction of the mind,” Anne said, dryly, “But listening to you, I have no doubt some poets are exceptional enough to warrant divine intervention.” There it was again, that sound. She was sure of it. Was there a gardener watching them and laughing at her? Understandable, but annoying.

“Ah, I could speak of your beauty for hours, for days. I could tell you how every part of you has bewitched me, how the splendour of you is unmatched, I could declaim in speeches longer than the longest ever made about the wonder I feel beholding you, until you are bored by descriptions of your own fairness, until you -”

“No, no. How could any women tire of such speeches?” At this point, she was long past bothering to sound at all sincere, and he still hadn’t realised. The man must be mad. “I long to hear what food, animal or plant my teeth remind you of. Not to mention my ears.”

The snort this time was loud enough for the vicomte to hear it as well.

“Excuse me?” he said, frowning as whoever was behind her stepped out of the shadow of the nearby trees. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Anne turned, blinking against brightness of the sun, and had the pleasure of seeing their watcher’s amused smile freeze on his face as he took her in fully. Her features were gilded by the sinking sun, her white dress clung to her slender body, tendrils of her swept-up hair fell artfully around her ivory face, and she almost glowed against the backdrop of the reddening sky and the panorama of the lake – Anne knew exactly what she looked like. An angel, perhaps, or a nymph. Something otherworldly in its beauty. It was, after all, exactly what she was aiming for.

The man’s face slackened in awe as he gazed at her, and Anne suppressed a smirk as she examined him in turn, only far more critically. He certainly was no gardener, that was for sure. For one thing, he had a glass of wine and was stowing a book, indicating he’d been here to read, drink, and doubtless avoid the others, a choice that right now she envied. His clothing wasn’t as resplendent as the vicomte’s but she could tell it was, if anything, better made than his, and just from the way he stood – confidently, almost lazily, a man secure in his place – she was suddenly certain that she’d found a target worthy of her time. 

After a long moment, he managed to drag his eyes away from her and to the vicomte, saying in a low voice. “Olivier d’Athos de la Fère, at your service, my lord. But most people just call me Athos.”

The vicomte frowned. “The Comte de la Fère’s boy? I understood he would be attending himself.”

“Not this year. My father found he felt too unwell to attend and promised to send me in his stead,” the man – Athos – said, his voice slightly too dry. He glanced at Anne again. “He did not inform me he had agreed on my behalf until a few days ago… hence my lateness.”

“How nice of him to grant you such a treat,” Anne said, unable to stop a provocative note entering her tone. The General was not known for the liveliness of his parties. For a young woman on the hunt for a rich older man to act as protector, this hardly mattered. For a young man – an active one, by the look of him – it was probably akin to torture. God knew Jean hadn’t stopped complaining since they got here, though the planned games of cards tonight had gone some way towards reconciling him to his fate.

“Wasn’t it?” Athos agreed, still in that dry voice. A real smile curled his lips, though, as he gazed at her. “My father is known for his generosity. I don’t believe I caught your name, my lady. Or yours, sir.”

The vicomte flushed, caught out in a social misstep – he should have introduced himself immediately, followed by Anne. “Le vicomte de Joubert,” he said, uncharacteristically brief. “And this is the lovely Mademoiselle de Breuil.”

For this trip, she wasn’t playing a widow. Right now she was Anne de Breuil, an orphan on the edge of society, a pure and virtuous beauty with no protectors apart from a disinterested cousin who would be glad to hand her off to any man for a handful of coins. Widows got more offers, certainly, but Anne had found ingénues sometimes got better ones.

She played the part well, and it worked wonders. Unlike the actresses and dancers noble men bought with coin and trinkets, she spoke beautifully, moved artfully, dressed impeccably, and never disgusted them by showing any sign of being lower-class or vulgar. Compared to the widowed upper-class ladies they also pursued, she looked wide-eyed and innocent, without a hint of the worldliness or grasping behaviour. It let gentlemen pretend what they were after was romantic instead of sordid, and in Anne’s experience, men would pay any amount in order to successfully lie to themselves.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, vicomte,” Athos said, though he couldn’t seem to concentrate on the man with Anne standing right there. “I believe I just made the acquaintance of your lovely wife inside.”

The vicomte flushed, no doubt realising just now how much Athos had probably heard. “Of course, of course. I will return to her shortly. I am just giving this lovely child a tour of the gardens, since she has not been to the General’s home before. As I attend each year, I believe I might reasonably be considered an expert on the place.”

Anne was doing some rapid thinking. So, this Athos was nobility, that was promising. Son of a Comte, but no clear indication if he were the eldest son – no matter, that was easy to find out. Regardless, he held himself with the unknowing arrogance unique to the very rich and well-connected, so he was probably someone worthwhile to attract at least for the moment.

The problem was, of course, that Anne tailored her way of speaking to her target, at least in part. She normally kept her tone light, playful, but never mocking, making sure her jokes flattered the man and showed her admiration of him, carefully judging what was likely to make him laugh or smile and what would only discomfit or concern him. The only thing men hated more than the feeling of being mocked was the feeling they were missing a joke, so she also deliberately kept her wit at a level below whatever the gentleman himself could produce, helping stoke his feelings of superiority. 

But she hadn’t known he was there, and the vicomte was truly oblivious, so the jibes this son of a Comte had overheard had been to only entertain herself. He had laughed at them. That meant he liked her humour, in spite of the unladylike sharpness and sarcasm of it, and she should probably continue in the same vein. But the thought made her uncomfortable. Her snide inner commentary on life was the closest she had to a genuine personality beneath all of her masks and ever-changing affectations, and it wasn’t something she normally shared with people. On occasion she let loose with her opinions about the fools she was so often forced to work with, but it wasn’t with the aim of _amusing_ them, that was for sure. 

“Perhaps monsieur de la Fère can continue my tour,” she said smoothly and bent a smile on him, feeling triumphant when a slight flush stained his cheeks in response. “That would allow you to return to your so-lonely wife, m’sieur.”

The vicomte hesitated, scowling at Athos, but there wasn’t much he could do but give in at the mention of his wife. He bowed shortly in Athos’s direction, pressed a lengthy and wet kiss to the back of Anne’s hand, and disappeared up the path.

“I don’t know if I’d consider myself an _expert_ on these gardens, having never seen them before,” Athos said in mock warning. His blue-grey eyes gleamed with a mixture of humour and sincere appreciation, and as he reached out his arm for her, she found her smile was genuine. It seemed her day was improving. “This could be perilous in the extreme.”

“I don’t care if you lead me directly into the lake, so long as you promise not to compare my eyes to lily pads when you do so.” When she rested her fingers on his arm, he shivered slightly, drawing in a too-quick breath. With his eyes darkened in reaction to her closeness, he seemed older, boyish admiration becoming something else, something strangely formidable, and part of her liked it.

Attractiveness wasn’t a thing she looked for in her various patrons – growing up in a brothel had taught her that good-looking men were likely to try and pay in handsomeness and charm instead of coin, and to react poorly when this failed to work – but she could acknowledge he was quite attractive despite this. That was… unlike her. Uncharacteristic.

“I think I can swear to that.”

She did her best to charm him as they walked and talked, to draw him out and make him like her, and found herself left confused and concerned by the results. It was the strangest seduction she’d ever taken part of, and given her history, that was saying something. The strangeness was all in the ease of it. He found everything she said amusing or interesting, but not in the empty-headed way she was familiar with, and it put her off balance every time he responded in kind and forced a real smile out of her instead of an empty fake. She hardly had to breathe or move for his eyes to focus on her with incredible intensity, and that was worse, because for the first time she found herself responding a little to that intensity, enjoying it in a way that seemed like more than professional pride. It felt like the walk took hours and yet finished in seconds, leaving her seated beside him at a dinner that passed in a similar haze of laughter and ceaseless conversation. After that everyone else moved to drinks, and card games, and gossip, and she and Athos moved from their seats but otherwise changed nothing at all.

He left her finally for a moment to give his apologies to the General for his lateness and she found herself following him with her eyes, breathless and confused by her own response to him. She told herself that if she was finally experiencing some of the desire she used to manipulate others, there was no harm in that – she’d always enjoyed parts of her job, and finding another part to enjoy could only be a good thing, so long as she didn’t let her unexpected reaction affect her plans. But when he glanced back at her and smiled she found herself backing away anyway. Just to get some air. Just to collect herself.

The cold night air against her hot face when she finally got to the balcony was just what she needed, and she closed her eyes to savour it. Then she forced her mind from confusion to calculation.

He was the elder son, she’d found that out. He probably had enough of an allowance to keep her as a mistress, for a while, at least. He rarely came to Paris, but that was probably good, since she was still avoiding Sarazin’s rage at her defection. Whether he had a home of his own hardly mattered – he could set her up in a lodge in the countryside, perhaps, or quietly install her in one of his family’s places for a while. Either way she was sure she could find enough coin and valuables to make the time spent with him profitable, even excluding the gifts she thought he’d probably bestow on her.

She suddenly sensed there was someone behind her, but it wasn’t him, and how did she know that with such certainty when she had met him only hours ago? But she was certain, and when she turned she was right, since it was the vicomte again.

“Mademoiselle de Breuil,” he said soulfully, moving closer to her and taking her hand before she could move it. “You are truly a picture, framed by the moon, its splendour paling beside that of your eyes -”

“My lord,” she replied, trying to retrieve her hand, but he was already kissing it. She felt her headache from earlier start to make a return.

He continued to kiss her hand wetly, and then tried to kiss up her arm, and she felt a stab of nausea to go with the headache. Oh, she’d dealt with worse, from far worse people, too, but he’d managed to sour her mood again and now she would have to deal with him if she wanted to go back inside and return to Athos’s side.

Anne struggled and made a few quiet protests – it wouldn’t do to alert everyone inside and end up with the vicomtesse insisting on her removal from the grounds – but he didn’t seem to hear them any more than he’d heard her mockery earlier, absorbed in reaching her neck. And then he was reaching out his other hand to paw at her, and any patience she’d been holding onto was abruptly extinguished.

She stopped bothering to struggle and instead reached into her hair with her free hand, found the blue hairpin that accented her dark hair so well, and with cool consideration stabbed it hard into the soft flesh of his inner elbow. Anne was no poet, but she would have likened the noise he made to a bird, although certainly not a lark – perhaps a terrified chicken – and she twisted her wrist to drive the hairpin in further, drawing blood.

He yanked back from her so fast he nearly tripped, grasping at the spot she’d stabbed with his other hand – oh, it was bleeding quite fiercely, she was almost impressed. She hadn’t sharpened this pin, though it had been much easier to reach than her two hidden knives on this occasion, so perhaps she should in future. Far less suspicious than using her knives.

“I said, no.” Anne said mildly, rolling her eyes at the infuriated man.

“How dare you -” he squawked, though he at least had enough sense to lower his voice before someone came to investigate. “I have told you how I feel toward you, such passion, such devotion – for you to be so cruel – and to attack me in such a way – I should complain to the General -”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Athos said, voice low and icy, and Anne suppressed a groan as she turned to see him standing there, clearly having witnessed enough of the incident that she could hardly play it down. His face was hard with fury as he moved to stand between the vicomte and the doorway, and she saw him grasp automatically for where a sword would be if they weren’t at a pleasant, low-key party where swords weren’t typically worn. He’d said he liked fencing and she’d seen at first glance that he was reasonably well-muscled, so she wasn’t entirely surprised by this response, but the last thing she needed was men duelling over her non-existent virtue.

If Anne had known he was there before now then she would have whimpered and continued to struggle. She could have been a perfect damsel in distress for him to save with a punch. If he’d turned up a moment earlier, that scene would have played out without her having to do a thing, she could almost visualise it. God, what a waste. She briefly considered playing the traumatised, assaulted innocent, bursting into tears and seeking shelter in his arms. But he must have seen her roll her eyes dismissively, perhaps he had even seen her nonchalance as she stabbed the vicomte, and even Anne was not a good enough actress to convince a man of her fragility after that. At least, a man like him.

Instead, once again she was forced to be genuine, her least favourite tactic. “I’m fine, Athos,” she gritted out, before remembering that she should not be calling him that. “Let him go back inside.” When you had nothing but bad options, after all, you still picked the best of them. Life had taught her that.

Athos scowled, eyes not leaving the vicomte. “He attacked you.”

“I dealt with it,” she said flatly, annoyed to realise that any chance she had with Athos had no doubt just disappeared. Men did not like women who dealt with things, or women who ordered them about, and she wondered for a second if she should have just let Athos punch him or challenge him to a duel. But that situation was unlikely to end well for her.

After a moment, Athos moved aside and let the man through. Then he stepped forward to her, arms raised as if to show he meant her no harm. “You’re very brave,” he said, approval and admiration starting to overtake anger, and she blinked at him in surprise. “You handled that quite… quite capably. It must have been alarming.”

 _Capable_ , surely the death knell of any amorous interest, she thought, but looking at him somehow she could not believe it. “If I wasn’t willing to let hearing a hundred verses about the colour of my lips spoil my evening, I’m hardly likely to let anything else even dent it,” she said, falling back on flippancy.

“Still, I cannot imagine how you must feel,” he said. “Your cousin should keep a closer eye on you, especially in such mixed company. He shouldn’t be drinking and playing cards while you fend for yourself. I’ll have a word with him.”

“Splendid,” she said. She wondered if she should give up trying to guess his reactions – so far, she wasn’t getting much right. For someone whose trade relied entirely on manipulation, this was troubling. Perhaps she should set her sights elsewhere. A few other men attending had shown signs of potential interest, and they were much easier to predict. “I can’t imagine anything more likely to inspire Jean toward reformation of character than unsolicited advice from a complete stranger.”

A glimmer of amusement lightened the seriousness of his expression. “I can be quite persuasive.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well. If I still had my sword on, I could be. Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Ah, unsolicited _threats of violence_ from a complete stranger. My mistake. Jean’s cousinly protectiveness will grow to new heights with such persuasion at hand.” She quirked her lips into a smile and was glad to see him respond with his own. “Surely you’ve seen I can take care of myself?” Perhaps she should appeal to him as a protector like she’d initially planned, play at being afraid and alone, but his expression of admiration indicated that she hadn’t lost his interest so far. She had heard men say they liked spirited women before – perhaps here was the first one she could believe it of.

“You deserve to be protected,” he said, so genuinely she felt uncomfortable. “Whether you need it or not.”

Anne could feel herself flush again. “I _deserve_ another drink, I believe,” she said, deliberately lightening the moment and extending her hand for his arm. “You can escort me to one.”

“As mademoiselle wishes,” he said, and she felt again that strange warmth where he touched her and wondered where this foolishness would end.


	2. Athos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Athos falls in love, extremely quickly.

Athos knew what his father thought of him – what most people thought of him, in fact. He had never been exactly cynical, but he was too quiet, too deadpan, too _distant_ for true likeability. Thomas was the lively one, charming and boisterous, while Athos leant against the wall and drank and watched, his sardonic remarks addressed to the wallpaper when he bothered to voice them at all. Any conversation Thomas was a part of bounced and rollicked wildly, pushed along by gales of laughter and extravagant tales. Conversations with Athos, in comparison, were a dull and awkward experience, alternating long pauses with the occasional dry remark that left his listeners trying to determine if he was joking, and if he was, whether the joke was on them.

A point in his favour as a future Comte, however, was that his dryness also made him the last person in the world to indulge in flights of fancy or impulsive behaviour. Until now, apparently.

Because now he has met the most brilliant, charming, intelligent, beautiful woman in existence, spirited and funny and brave and lovely beyond compare, and all he can think is that every pause he’s ever left in conversation in his life must have been because he was waiting for her to speak. Without knowing it, he leant against walls at parties and balls because it was a better vantage point to watch out for her arrival, and every sarcastic comment addressed to the wallpaper has in fact been spoken to the empty space some part of his soul knew she would someday occupy. He’d simply been filling in his time until she finally arrived, and he had never realised that.

He knew his father and Thomas would think he’d run mad, when they saw the change in him. His valet already seemed concerned. 

It had been a strange time, technically staying at this country estate but in actuality existing on some other plane of being, a place that was more joyous than sermons led him to believe even Heaven could be. He walked with Anne around the gardens every day, ceaselessly trading opinions, anecdotes, and idle thoughts, his arm burning where her hand rested on it and the rest of him burning with the desire to touch her more. At every meal he sat next to her, barely noticing what he ate, close enough that sometimes the side of their arms would brush, and he thought she caught her breath every time it happened just as he did. Even when they were across the room from each other, their eyes would meet in a speaking look whenever they thought of a comment they wanted to say to the other, faces lighting up at unspoken jokes no one else seemed able to understand or share. He had never previously realized that the dullest party in the world could be redeemed by just a shared look, but it could.

Whenever he was apart from Anne, he found himself on the edge of panic, wondering what he would say when he saw her again. She was perfect and it was unthinkable she could care for him at all, let alone feel the way he did. When he thought of being around her, in his mind he tripped over his words, he fumbled, he stuttered, he was awkward, he insulted her, he embarrassed her. But then as soon as he was actually with her all of that melted away and it became the easiest thing in the world. He was not a man who built friendships quickly or easily, and he would have assumed that romance would have been even worse, but with her he could say or do nearly anything, and somehow it always felt like the right thing. He was more himself with her than he’d ever imagined possible.

If anything, the problem was the opposite of what he imagined. He expected to forget what to say but instead had trouble holding back from all the things he wanted to tell her, wanted her to know. He expected to be too afraid to touch her but instead wanted to pull her in so that they touched everywhere, his body lighting up and breath quickening just at the sight of her. He expected her to draw back, to set him at a distance, but instead she seemed to want to deepen every conversation, prolong every touch.

He had never been one for flights of fancy, never been a romantic. But then this had happened and denial was useless. He was sure that he had found the other half of his soul. The hunting trip was drawing to an end – it was time to act.

Anne’s parents were dead, that wastrel cousin and his siblings her only remaining family, she had no close friends or eligible suitors to speak of. There was nothing left in Paris for her, not really. When she had first implied that, it had taken all of Athos’s strength not to speak then, not to offer her everything he had. But he’d known her only a few hours, then. True, knowing her ten days wasn’t a great improvement, but it was something. He’d waited as long as he could. His fear wasn’t that he didn’t know her well enough to spend the rest of his life with her, since he’d been sure of his feelings from almost the moment he met her – instead, he worried a precipitous proposal would unnerve her and make her pull away from him. Ten days – well, probably it would still alarm her. But even if she didn’t feel as deeply as he did, surely by now she would at least consider it. Even if she rejected him, perhaps he could ask to accompany her to Paris and spend time working to engage her affections, to try again in another week or month or year, however long it took.

He had never thought he would have to propose to a woman. He might not be officially betrothed to Catherine, but his father and hers had always seemed sure it would happen, and Athos had simply assumed that someday his rather-uptight friend would become his rather-passionless wife. It would have been a simple, emotionless business transaction, and he could have approached that with just as little apprehension as any business deal (and with just as little joy). Instead, he found himself pacing the spacious guest room he was staying in, practising romantic declarations that sound as trite and stupid as anything the perforated vicomte could come up with.

With a muttered curse, he opened the door and strode out. Well, he would simply have to make it up as he went.

She rose with a smile the moment he entered the room, and as always he found it impossible to look away. There was a dozen other people there, but Anne demanded all his attention by virtue of just her existence. He’d met attractive women before, some noble, some common. A few had even shown interest in him, though he suspected that had less to do with him and more to do with the title he would someday gain or with his coin purse. But none had held a candle to Anne, who glowed with loveliness, a vision made flesh.

“Would you care to -” he began as he had every morning.

She interrupted mischievously, “Walk in the gardens with you? Why, my lord, how unexpected. But of course.” 

He proffered his arm, smiling down at her, and she took it. At the edge of his vision, Athos could see the woman who’d been sitting next to Anne roll her eyes to Heaven. He’d barely noticed the response of their fellow attendees this stay, so wrapped up in Anne they were even more unimportant than he would usually have found them, but he was vaguely aware that his and Anne’s preoccupation with each other had amused or disgusted most of the company. Apart from Jean, in fact, who seemed completely indifferent to Athos’s behaviour towards his cousin. At first, Athos had half expected a confrontation about his intentions, but it had never occurred. Anne truly deserved better.

She was silent as they started to trace their usual path, and Athos, struggling with the right words to start his declaration with, didn’t break the silence. Eventually she said, tone noncommittal, “Jean and I are leaving tonight, you know. Back to Paris.”

Athos halted abruptly, and she moved to face him. “I know,” he said. “I… I wished to speak to you about that, in fact.”

Anne looked up at him expectantly, something like relief in her expression. “Yes?”

“Yes.” Athos tried to assemble his thoughts. It was difficult.

He paused too long, and Anne’s smile faded, no doubt assuming that whatever he had to say was unpleasant. “My lord?” She stepped a little closer to him, reaching out her hand as if concerned at his distress, and stumbled on the rough pathway.

Anne moved very gracefully, but despite this she had a few times lost her balance on the garden paths before as they walked, leaning against his side for balance until she recovered her footing. He had enjoyed each time shamefully, her warmth and softness pressed against him making him blush like a young boy. He had tried not to touch her too inappropriately as he helped her remain upright each time, but although his hands hadn’t wandered his thoughts had. This time, though, she had been facing him directly, so she tripped neatly into his arms, the warm weight of her flush against the whole length of his body, her hands against his chest. He nearly gasped in reaction, arms coming up automatically to hold her, every inch of him coming suddenly and vibrantly alive at the feel of her. She was closer to him than she’d ever been and yet, still nowhere near close enough. His blood was suddenly raging through his body, the noise of his heart stampeding in his ears, and the thoughts he’d been trying to organise flew out of his head entirely.

Her face was two inches from his, at most, her head tipped back so she gazed up at him with wide green eyes, her lips parted in surprise, her face lightly flushed. He reacted before he could stop himself, moving the little space necessary to slot his lips over hers, swallowing her shocked intake of breath.

The kiss lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like a slap of sensation, the fire burning through his whole body and leaving him shaking. The taste of her mouth, the little noise of pleasure she made, the way her fingers curled into his shirt as if to hold him in place – he thought he would remember every part of it, forever, but most especially the feeling of absolute certainty that stole over him.

Forcing himself to withdraw was probably the hardest thing he’d ever done, when he wanted to kiss her forever, held tightly against him, exploring her mouth and finding what pleased her. It had to be done, though – if he took advantage of her innocence in such matters, how could she ever continue to trust him? He did not want her to agree to a marriage with him because he’d ruined her reputation with a reckless kiss, he wanted her to willingly choose to trust him with her hand, her virtue, and the rest of her days. The rest of _their_ days.

Anne was flushed and bright-eyed as he stepped back regretfully, every inch that separated them feeling like a mile. For a second it seemed like she would follow him, stepping back into his arms, but instead stilled and shook her head in a kind of amazed confusion. “I -” she began, “I think – if you -” and then stopped, seemingly not knowing what to say.

“Please, let me speak,” he said urgently. “You know – you must know – how much I have come to care for you. How I would like to continue to care for you. I don’t want you to go to Paris. I want you to come with me. I could not bear to lose you from my life. You are all I will ever want, all I will ever need. Everything I have is yours, if you would like it – my life, my home, my soul, everything.”

She tilted her head, flush dying down, a smile starting to curl up her perfect mouth. “A pretty speech,” she teased, leaning in to him a little. “So you would like me for a mistress, then?”

She couldn’t possibly think anything so absurd, and if she had thought he was insulting her like that, she would hardly smile at it, so he realises she must be teasing him. He wondered if she thought his words were not genuine. How could she not take his declaration seriously? It was the fashion to make overblown declarations to ladies, a sort of courtly love that set great store by passionate but empty speeches, but he was not that kind of man. She had to know that, surely.

“Of _course_ not,” he said passionately, suddenly afraid she knew he was in earnest but was trying to derail his confession so as not to have to refuse him. “Please, do not mock me. I am quite serious. You must know I would _never_ dishonour you by suggesting something like that. I would never dishonour you in any way. I said everything I have is yours, if you wish for it, and that includes my name. I understand that it is very soon, I do, but you must understand that my feelings for you are such that I had to at least try.”

Anne froze so completely he was no longer sure she even breathed, her face paling as he watched, and he felt another sick wrench of fear. Kissing him back had seemed such a promising sign that he had charged ahead thoughtlessly, and now perhaps he had ruined everything. “You wish to _marry_ me,” Anne said, tone curiously flat. She pronounced the word ‘marry’ as if it was a word in a foreign language, and she wasn’t fluent.

“More than I’ve ever wanted anything,” he said hopelessly. “I’m sorry, I’ve upset you. That was not my intention. If you wish me to leave -”

“No,” she interrupted him. “No, I don’t.” Her eyes were glittering now, but he couldn’t read the tangled emotions in them, and she was trembling as if she was in shock. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself for a few seconds, a very fearful gesture, as he waited nervously. “I’ll marry you.”

“You – you will?” He was stunned, delight and apprehension warring inside him. There was nothing light in her manner now, but neither did she seem entirely happy. In fact, she seemed oddly tense, her mouth a thin line and her eyes narrowed.

Anne blinked, and seemed to register his worry for the first time. With what looked like an effort, she relaxed her rigid expression and took a deep breath. “Yes, I will,” she affirmed. A shaky smile spread slowly across her face and she stepped towards him again. “I absolutely will.”

This time, he did not stop himself from reaching for her, pulling her into a much longer kiss, one that left them both gasping. 

She was the one to pull away from this kiss, but she stayed within the circle of his arms and reached up to cup his cheek with one gentle hand, still close enough that he could feel her harsh breath against his face. “What about your family?” she whispered, and he suddenly understood her fear. “I am not of your level, I have no money, I have no connections they would want. Won’t they forbid it? Or are you hoping to present them with a fait accompli?”

“A fait accompli,” he admitted, slightly shamefaced. “Even if my father would eventually give in, it would take some time to bring him around. I don’t want to subject you to his temper or interrogations. If we go together, find a priest, a couple of witnesses… there will be no point in forbidding it after the fact. He will accept it because he must. You may not be nobility or bring a dowry, but besides that you are an ideal bride – genteel, proper, educated, chaste, from a respectable family line. My father will see that just as I do. There will be no grounds to object.”

“And if he tries to have the marriage annulled or set aside? There are ways to do that, if you have the connections and the church can be persuaded.”

Athos pulled her closer and let his eyes slide shut, leaning his chin on the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her silken hair. He was asking her to risk everything, he knew. If she married him and his father found some way to set it aside, she would have given up her reputation, her innocence and her family for an illusion. “I will tell him that if he does so, I will simply find another priest to marry us, and another, and another,” he said quietly. “But I do not think my father will react like that. Family and duty are everything to him, and ensuring the continuation of our line is both. If we have lived together, even for only a few days… he would never risk repudiating the marriage, not if there might be child.”

Athos was not a man who gave speeches, but here he was, giving many of them. Anne had that effect on him, it seemed. He would give as many speeches as required if it would persuade her to take this chance. He truly believed his father was more likely to accept the situation if confronted with Athos’s wife instead of simply his betrothed. In the face of a betrothed, the Comte could rage and bluster and threaten, accuse Anne of entrapping his son, attempt to have her sent away, contact her relatives, and do a number of other foolish things that would make Anne miserable and Athos furious. His father’s temper ran to extremes and in a rage he might say or do nearly anything. Luckily, his anger usually passed quickly as well, burnt out by the force of the emotion, but Athos wouldn’t care to bet on that in this situation.

The Comte’s fickleness of emotion also made him hesitate to make firm decisions, as he was just self-aware enough to know he would probably feel differently the next day – he’d been putting off making an official betrothal to Catherine for years now for exactly that reason. Athos had no reason to believe his father would make a quicker decision about whether to give permission for Athos and Anne to marry. But if Athos brought her home as his wife, there would be no point in either rage or equivocation. Nicolas de la Fère would be forced by his own code to treat Anne with the respect her new position demanded. A marriage was far more binding than a betrothal. Even in the unlikely event his father utterly refused to recognise it, the church would take a great deal of convincing to annul a consummated marriage between two parties that refused to live apart, especially if he and Anne were blessed with children.

However, Athos knew that Anne would have to trust him beyond anything to agree to this plan. He knew that he would stand firm and refuse to deny the marriage or allow them to be separated, but no matter what he said, she had no way to be sure he would keep his word. Other men in similar situations had allowed their marriages to be set aside. If it was, Anne could expect a future in a convent, perhaps, or one married to a man who could not afford to care if his intended bride was respectable. Or even worse, as a mistress, which is what the world would see her as if their marriage was set aside. Viewed like that, her shock and fear made sense.

“I will understand if you are not willing to risk it,” Athos said, his voice choked. “But I swear to you, if you agree to become my wife, I will never let anyone force us apart.”

She pulled back from him enough to study his face, and whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find it. “I think… it may be worth the risk, for me. I mean, _you_ might be,” she added quickly, as though worried he hadn’t understood what she meant. He felt a foolish smile spread across his face. “I will tell Jean to return to Paris without me.”

“He won’t want to come with us? Having a member of your family present as a chaperon and witness will add respectability to the journey and the ceremony,” Athos said, unable to stop smiling down at her, equally unable to stop himself from reaching up one hand to trace the perfect angle of her cheekbone and down the elegant line of her neck. He struggled to concentrate on plans and sense as it occurred to him they could be married by tonight, tomorrow at the latest. “And he must want to satisfy himself that I am to be trusted before letting you tie yourself to me for life.”

Though he knew from Anne they weren’t close, surely Jean must care a little for his cousin. He’d invited her to this event, if nothing else. Anne was heading into an uncertain future – if Athos was a dishonest or cruel man, he could ruin her life utterly without coming to any harm himself, and Jean had no way of knowing Athos was honourable. Even if familial affection was unnaturally absent, Jean should at least want to be there to ensure the marriage he offered wasn’t a sham or a false promise. Since this union would tie his family to that of a Comte, pure self-interest ought to motivate him enough to put in that effort, Athos would think.

“I was actually just going to tell him one of the ladies here had offered me a place in her carriage, not that I was leaving with you,” Anne said. “I don’t think he’d care, regardless.” She saw the shock in his face and gave him a sad little smile. “He is only a cousin, after all, not a brother or father. Jean never has cared much for other people. I think I would rather have strangers as our witnesses. At least then no one can accuse them of having reason to lie.”

“Strangers are likely change their story if pressured by an angry Comte, though,” Athos pointed out. “My valet Planchet can be one witness – he’s always been a loyal servant, he is employed by me rather than my father, and he is an honest man. If we had a family member of yours for another…”

“Jean would change his story for a bottle of wine or a handful of coin,” Anne said, a little too sharply. “Better to trust in a stranger than in him.”

Athos shook his head. “As I said, you deserve better. Your family doesn’t care for you as they should.”

“I was under the impression I was about to have a new family,” she said, voice low. The smile that spread across her face was tremulous, but firmed as he stared down at her, speechless. “And that at least one member of it cared for me very much.”

“I love you,” he said, the words stark and simple as they hung in the air, utterly undeniable. “I’ll always love you.” And he leant down to kiss her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say writing an Athos that's happy, romantic, optimistic and sober feels completely bizarre and is actually really difficult. I did enjoy making every fluffy moment here based completely on Athos's total lack of understanding of anything that's going on, though.
> 
> Or basically: Athos thinks he's in a romance novel. Milady thinks she's in a heist movie. Sadly, they're both wrong.


	3. Anne

Anne was not the kind of person who was ever off-balance for long. Her life had involved enough sudden changes of fortune that she usually found it easy to keep up with them. She was accustomed to bouncing back from death threats or near-arrest in moments with a snide quip, adopting a new name and persona as if she was changing her dress, and adjusting her plans on the fly to cope with whatever good luck or ill an uncertain wind blew her way. She had her knives, her lockpicks, her drugs, and most dangerously of all, her mind: she could cope with anything.

This, however, she found somewhat confronting.

She had never gotten married before. She understood the appeal of it, somewhat. Stability and respectability, a guaranteed place to sleep and a routine to follow, sometimes even a level of comfort depending on the husband. Men had been asking her since before she was old enough to legally marry, but Anne had never gone through with it. What good was stability if it included poverty? What good was respectability if you were afforded no respect? The kind of men who asked for the hand of a woman like her were either desperate to control her and keep her, or pious hypocrites who wanted to see their desire for her as something righteous. Both were dangerous and became more dangerous over time, so even when she agreed, Anne had always been gone before the actual day arrived, richer and safer than she would have been if she stayed.

Sometimes, though, the thought of stability was undeniably a persuasive one. Stability with riches and an eventual title, even more so.

Not that Anne could stay forever, of course. A long con was possible, but a never-ending one was not. Even one lasting a few months could be difficult – she generally left somewhere in the first few weeks, before infatuation could sour into suspicion. With an especially oblivious man she could probably keep up the pretence for as much as half a year, but by then, why bother? She’d long since have taken anything of value.

Obviously, getting anything from this required marrying Athos and at least getting to his home. So, a couple of weeks. But then, there was the potential to get so much more if she waited just a little longer than that. Athos would most likely want his wife to be dressed well, so if she waited a month, she could have a wardrobe fit for the wife of the heir to comte. Enough quality clothing to help her pass as nobility for years. And although she could persuade new jewellery out of Athos easily, getting access to heirloom pieces would probably take earning his father’s approval, which might take months but would undoubtedly be worth it if she could manage it. 

Not to mention the opportunity to broaden her skills and increase her knowledge. She could improve her accent and diction through the practice and exposure this would give her, memorise names to drop and relationships to exploit for later cons, and get inside looks at various noble houses without exciting the least suspicion. Around a member of the family, the de la Fères would presumably be very open about their friends and relatives, and Anne had a good instinct for secrets. A wide new array of scams, thefts, and blackmail would become available to her. Basically, this one job could give her everything she needed to set her up for life, provided she played it just right. Perhaps she should stay longer. Half a year would do it, easily.

She felt another frisson of fear at the thought, but unfortunately, it was not at the idea of six months on the edge of discovery, but at the realisation there was no reason she could think of to stay longer. Whenever Anne remembered she should get out as soon as she could, she started to invent delay, to think it should be two weeks, a month, three months. And no matter how logically she laid out her reasons in her own mind, how often she told herself she was being pragmatic and mercenary, she was afraid that her real reason for wanting to spin this out was simply that she would miss seeing his smile.

He did have a very nice smile, after all.

“Anne?” Athos said, looking concerned. “You haven’t spoken in a while.”

“Just… lost in thought,” she said, forcing a smile. She reached across and took his gloved hand in her own, finding herself slightly irritated that she could still feel and respond to the heat of him even through two layers of fabric. “We must be there soon, surely.”

“Are you feeling well? I know some people get ill in coaches, especially when the trip is so long and the roads so bad.” He squeezed her hand softly, and she thought she could feel the warmth of the touch travel up her arm and warm her face as well. “I’m not especially fond of them myself.”

“You would have preferred to gallop across the countryside with me in your arms?” she suggested, raising her eyebrows, her smile turning genuine when he ducked his head in rueful acknowledgement. 

“Oh, of course I would have,” he said. “That would have been properly dramatic for an elopement, but more to the point, we’d already _be_ there.”

She pantomimed hurt. “Ten hours in a carriage with me is not your idea of a good time? You wound me, sir.”

“Ten hours in an enclosed space with you but unable to touch you is my idea of torture,” he said, voice getting a bit rougher. He flushed and looked away from her again with an effort, but she could see his throat work as he swallowed hard to avoid saying (or possibly doing) more. He still held her hand, though, and she felt no desire to extract it.

Anne felt a shiver go through her at his words but tried to ignore it. If he’d fallen in line with what she initially expected and invited her to be his mistress for a time, she would have moved to his side of the carriage and clambered onto him to show him exactly how suited she was to her new position, rocking coach or no. Since he wanted her as his wife instead, this would probably send the opposite message. A mistress could be unexpectedly wanton with her master – even if Anne was playing at virginity, throwing in a self-conscious blush would usually be enough to set their minds at rest – but the future wife of nobility could not show anything less than absolute virtue. Those kisses had been enough of a risk. If he came to the conclusion she wasn’t the sweet, innocent daughter of gentility she seemed, Anne had no idea how he would react.

Athos didn’t seem the sort to throw her out of the carriage in the middle of nowhere, but she preferred to err on the side of pessimism in these situations. At best, she thought he’d change the offer of marriage to something a bit more base, and she was surprised by how very much she disliked that idea. There was nothing too unpleasant about being a mistress, but now that he’d offered marriage, she found she couldn’t stop picturing it. Imagining what it would be like to really share her life with someone, even if it was only a fake life and for a short time, instead of just sharing her bed and company for scattered hours. Really being with someone.

With most of her patrons, this would have been a nightmare scenario, but Anne found the idea of spending part of every day with Athos curiously attractive. Waking up nestled against each other, taking their meals side by side, spending their evenings together, all of it. Anne had always preferred to work alone, viewing the company of other people as a necessary evil instead of a pleasure. She’d tolerated Sarazin for a time because it was safer than trying to leave him, had run with a gang of young thieves when she was a child because it helped her to escape notice, and had occasionally worked with others for short jobs, but it was only ever the benefits she thought of, not them. She didn’t _like_ people. Oh, sometimes she took a kind of pleasure in manipulating them, exploiting them, mocking them, or delegating to them, of course she did. But there being someone she wanted around purely because their presence was more enjoyable than their absence was something she hadn’t experienced since she was quite a young child. She thought _liking_ was a childish and unnecessary emotion.

But she did like Athos, somehow. He made her laugh, and occasionally he made her blush, and she liked him, as much as she liked his smile. For no damn reason at all. It left her disconcerted.

Planchet leaned around from his seat next to the coachman, holding onto the roof to balance himself against the rocking of the coach, and said, “I believe we’ve arrived, sir.”

Anne had met quite a few valets in the course of her cons, and thought Planchet was one of the better ones. He somehow managed to seem like he had no thoughts, expressions or emotions of his own, and yet still give off an impression of utter competence and loyalty. It was quite a feat. She could tell from the faint cues that no actor could hide that he was concerned about what they were doing, but someone less skilled in reading people would have no idea.

“All right,” Athos said, letting out a shaky sigh. “Wait here. I don’t think it will take long.”

“What if he doesn’t give you a marriage license?” Anne blurted out without thinking. It had occurred to her multiple times on the way here. There was reason Athos had chosen this particular parish. More than a decade ago, when the bishop of this region had been just a priest, the church had sent him to Pinon for a year at the request of the Comte to teach his sons better reading and writing than they could learn at the local parish. Athos maintained that he was a good man and would help them. Anne wasn’t so sure. 

“He will,” Athos said, and kissed her forehead lightly.

While he was gone Anne struggled to stay still. She was tempted to exit the coach to stretch her legs, but knew she would just pace the street. They needed a license for this. Without one, they would have to read the banns, and that took three weeks and was public enough that the Comte _would_ find out.

Returning to Athos’s family unmarried… well. For peasants, a betrothal was as good as a marriage, considered more like a period of practice for the married state than anything else, and pre-empting the wedding date in some ways was expected. But she knew that for the aristocracy, the public and legal agreements between families was what mattered, and pledges between two individuals weren’t really considered binding without family backing. The Comte had chosen not to betroth and marry off Athos when he was still a child, which showed more concern for his son’s life than most, but that didn’t mean he would approve of Athos choosing someone entirely without his guidance.

“He will do it,” Athos said breathlessly, re-entering the coach. “So long as we both swear we are free and clear, and we make a donation to the church, he has no objection at all. He will do it tomorrow, he said. He even knows a few trustworthy people to act as witnesses.”

She had never married anyone, so she was free and clear, but that hardly mattered: Anne de Breuil had only existed for twelve days now. Before that she had been called something else – Marie Blosset, perhaps? And before that, Antoinette de Coustes. She had been a lot of people.

It was undoubtedly Anne de Breuil, though, who felt an unladylike grin split her face at the words. Athos took her hand again, eyes shining with joy, and they beamed at each other like fools.

That night in her room Anne tossed and turned. The maid from the hotel Athos had briefly employed to assist her with her hair and clothing and to keep her company had been assiduous in ensuring her comfort, but she couldn’t manage to still her mind. She kept going over it repeatedly, how soon she should leave, what she should take. At the same time, she was absurdly conscious of him being further from her than he had been since the moment she met him. For some reason her mind wanted to dwell on that as well. In the General’s home, their rooms had been far apart, but he had been beneath the same roof as her. For tonight, Athos was staying in an entirely separate hotel in an attempt to remove any impropriety from the elopement, and she felt like some strange thread of connection between them was stretched thin. She had no business feeling any connection at all.

She was even paler than normal the next day. The maid complimented her on it as she arranged her hair artfully, as she helped her on with her nicest dress, the one she had been wearing when he first saw her. If the maid was confused why a woman who only owned slightly shabby dresses and very cheap necklaces could afford full-time attendance and the nicest room in the hotel, she was at least sensible enough to avoid commenting on it, and spoke to Anne with a careful blend of admiration and deference.

Athos arrived as soon as she exited her room, looking nearly as pale as her. His eyes blazed and a faint flush sprung up along his cheekbones when he saw her, and she felt herself responding in kind, strangely nervous.

Her Latin was bad – she should have listened more during her time in the convent, she supposed – but Athos hardly seemed to notice her stumbling through the vows, too intent on saying his own. The priest who performed the ceremony was cheerful, the bishop who had once taught Athos only saw them briefly but gave his blessings along with the license, and the three educated and upstanding men there to witness appeared charmed by the whole affair and readily agreed to write accounts of it as evidence, just as Planchet would. The church was empty and echoing, but sun shone through the windows and made the whole place glow.

There was nothing in it to either excite or to upset Anne, and she wondered why, then, she felt both. Her nerves grew worse with every word spoken, her face paling further, her hands trembling. For a moment, Athos looked likely to put a stop to the ceremony and check again if she had any doubts but she shook her head at him stubbornly and kept on. No one else seemed to find anything strange in it. Perhaps fearful brides were common.

She was shaking in earnest by the time the ceremony was over, filled with a mixture of strange, primal fear, and confusion at that fear. She could barely remember a time when she had been what men considered pure – perhaps, in fact, she never had been. Perhaps the heavy, sticky-sweet air of the brothel she’d grown up in had built up her immunity to any kind of spiritual virtue with every breath, until the physical kind became nothing more than an afterthought.

She didn’t fear discovery. At least a dozen men had thought they had an innocent in their beds when in fact they lay with her. She had no fear that Athos, in most ways much less worldly than the previous men she’d lain with, would somehow be the one to question it. She would tremble and flush at every touch, ask naïve questions in lilting tones, confide her amazement at the feel of him, all the usual things men expected from blushing virgins. Anne knew well how to tread the thin line between appearing inexperienced and just seeming completely inept in bed – she would manage.

The marriage wasn’t the reason, either. Sure, she had not been paired with someone in holy matrimony before, but it hardly amounted to a magical spell turning her into something other than what she was. Her time in the convent had cured any belief Anne had once possessed. She had no respect for the holy. Anne de Breuil wasn’t even her real name. She had no real name. So, the marriage meant nothing at all. Why, then, did she feel nauseous at the idea of the aftermath?

“We don’t have to do anything,” Athos whispered in her ear as he escorted her up the stairs to their room. He stroked her upper arm lightly with one hand, trying to calm her. “Even if you wish me to sleep on the floor, I can do that.”

That was why she was afraid, Anne realised suddenly. She was afraid because Athos was the kind of man who would fall in love and marry a woman who brought nothing to the union but her body, and then would announce that he did not even need that if the thought made her shake. No doubt what he felt for her was infatuation, not the love he believed, but that just made it more incredible. He was wild for her, yet he could stand there claiming he would not touch her and she almost believed him.

That was what she feared to lose. Men were men, after all, and she had known many of them. Athos was – different. He admired her fierceness, enjoyed her wit, listened to her opinions, accepted her decisions. She did not love him, but she respected him, a feeling almost unique to her experience with men, and, in fact, with other human beings in general. She even liked him.

If she lay with him, some part of her thought that feeling would evaporate like mist. He would be just another man.

Perhaps he would take his pleasure and never even notice if he gave any in return, like most men did, rough and over-demanding and so oblivious they barely realised the women beneath them had thoughts and cares of their own. Then there were the men who did notice but did not care, certain that sex had been designed for them and that women were somehow both receptacle and dispenser of it, not entitled to more than a coin or a bellyful of children in return. Then there were the rarest, men who did try to give pleasure – but in her experience they were almost worse than the others. Men like that sought to please a woman just because it swelled their ego along with their cock, as a sort of performance for an audience of one, making the woman’s pleasure just another thing they could wring out of her for themselves. She’d had men try that on her before, forcing her to counterfeit moans and pants and expend twice as much energy so they could beam with smugness and absolve themselves of any later cruelty. It would almost be better if he were oblivious and insensitive than that.

But then, however he turned out to be in bed, it all came to the same end… he would look at her body and see the curves of her without seeing the substance beneath, see the parts of her that sparked desire without seeing _her_ , the real person wearing the body. He would never see her again, not really, and in turn she would see him all too accurately for what he was. The fondness she had not intended to feel for him would be stamped out like old embers.

But that was for the best, she told herself. Better to see him that way now. Then she could return to her plan with a clear mind, and easily decide the best moment to gather up her winnings and flee.

They reached the top of the stairs.

The proprietor had lit a lamp in preparation for their return – an extravagance Athos must have paid for, since no innkeeper could afford to leave lamps burning in perpetuity. He moved around the room lighting more candles as Anne stood there watching him. Something in that little gesture decided her.

“We don’t have to do anything,” he said again helplessly as she moved, as if in a trance, towards the bed.

“No,” Anne said, and reached towards her laces. Her fingers had, astonishingly, stopped shaking. She started to pull at them. “I think we really do.”

“Let me help,” he said softly, and stepped forward. His hands were slow on her laces, pale and clumsy as he pulled at them, and she realised he was nervous too.

“Have you done this before?”

He flushed. “A few times,” he admitted, shamefaced, then hurried to add. “But never with any… I mean… it never mattered. Youthful mistakes. If I had known…” He shook his head. “I wish I had waited. I wish I had known to wait.”

“I think the time it will take you to open my dress is wait enough, at the speed you’re loosening my laces,” she said, a little dryly, amazed she still had the presence of mind to joke, even more amazed that he could manage a half-smile in response. His eyes were still anxious though.

“If I do anything that scares you,” he began, pulling his hands away. She went to speak, but for once he spoke over her. “No, don’t tell me you’re brave. I know that. I don’t want you brave, I want you safe, I want you _happy_. You can say ‘slow’. You can say ‘stop’. I will, I swear it.”

“You have sworn many things lately,” Anne said, 

“I have meant every word.”

“Charmer,” she teased.

“No one else has ever accused me of that particular crime, wife.”

He leaned forward and kissed her and she fell into it, surprised by how _good_ it felt when he pressed his lips against her own, how skilfully his mouth could move. But it seemed now they were married he was willing to give her more than the more chaste touches he’d limited himself to so far, and she gasped as he opened his mouth against hers, tasting her thoroughly. There was something about the way he kissed, the intensity of it, that drew her like a moth to fire – it was like he threw every emotion he had into it

She lost her mind for a minute, just pulling at his clothes to draw him closer and pushing back against his mouth with single-minded want at the same time. The heat grew between them and sparked something in her lower belly, a sort of deliciously painful tightening that she wanted again and again without quite knowing why. She moaned against his lips and felt her hands fist into his shirt without her permission, yanking him even closer.

She tried to pull her mind away as he touched her. Usually, it took no effort at all to remove herself from the moment, to see it clearly but as if from a distance. In fact, normally it wasn’t even a conscious choice to withdraw, let alone a struggle. Anne would never have described it as hiding – she wasn’t afraid of anything likely to happen in bed – but in general she found herself surveying moments like this with a curious amused detachment, like it was all happening to someone else. For a second she nearly managed it, but then his voice pulled her back into herself and the heat of his touch kept her there.

“Are you alright?” he gasped, pulling back again to study her face with concern. “I thought… for a second, you didn’t seem…” He didn’t have the words to explain it, but she understood.

He’d noticed. No one had ever noticed before. Anne blinked at him, stunned beyond words, stunned almost to tears.

Then she whispered, “I’m fine” and pulled him back down to her, continuing the passionate kiss and giving up on pretending this was like any other time she’d had sex. It wasn’t. Anne was not used to men who gazed at her like she was the answer to their prayers, or men who checked that she was enjoying every touch they gave her, or men who noticed when she tried to put up walls to keep them out, or men who seemed to really see her and like what they saw. She wasn’t used to Athos. 

Once they got her corset and his shirt off he was on her again, kissing at her breasts, stroking them, eyes fixed on her face with every touch he made, wanting to be sure she was all right. He licked at her nipple and she gasped in surprise, more at her own response than at the action. It had sent a curl of heat down her spine. Her nipple hardened and she arched into his mouth, but her gasp had stopped him cold, his eyes flying up in worry.

“Did I say ‘stop’?” she asked, and was embarrassed by how breathless she was. “It’s fine. You don’t need to – oh!” The wet warmth of his mouth enveloped her other nipple and her eyes slid shut in amazed pleasure. He sucked at it, a warm tugging sensation that sent more sparks of heat through her, slowly building into an inferno. It felt like every movement of his tongue pulled directly at the core of her until she was moaning desperately.

At some point they managed to yank off the rest of each other’s clothes and he moved his mouth lower, licking between her thighs until the feel of him was the only thing in the whole world she was aware of, the only thing in the world she understood or wanted or would ever want or would ever need. She arched and moaned and lost her mind and found pleasure, lots of it, more than she’d ever known there was or could be. And then she was touching him as well, made clumsy with pleasure and need – she’d never been clumsy before, not ever – and when he finally pushed inside her it was because she was begging him to, and she couldn’t stop begging, and she couldn’t stop wanting, but it was alright by then because he couldn’t stop wanting either and she would never ask him to.

When she could think again she was half cross with herself, through the ache of pleasure and the haze of exhaustion. She was the more experienced. He shouldn’t be able to undo her like this. She should be the one leaving him mindless and wanting, not the other way around. But God, he’d seemed to know her instinctively, like he understood her body more than she did. And the worst was that gaze, steady on her even as he’d passed over to mindlessness – not looking for her pleasure to please himself, but simply because, judging by the concern in his eyes, he would rather have thrown himself into Hell than cause her fear or discomfort.

She found it impossible to keep awake, curling into his grasp as if she was boneless, finally, finally able to stop thinking.

The thoughts were there when she woke up, but so was he, staring at her, and she felt again that tightening in her belly.

“How long are we to stay here?” she said, rolling towards him and letting her hand start to trace its way down his chest, glorying in the feel of their nakedness. The room was bright and warm with sunlight and the world was somehow more beautiful than she’d thought it was. He was more beautiful than she’d thought he was.

“I thought a day or two would be enough,” Athos said, swallowing hard as she moved her hand lower.

She stopped stroking his lower belly and moved her hand back up to poke him accusingly in the chest. “Enough? Are you suggesting you could become bored with me?” It was a joke, but she found to her surprise that it was also a real fear. Not that it should matter, since she was leaving, but somehow it did matter.

“Never,” he said, trying to catch her accusing finger in his hand.

“That’s what it sounded like to me,” she teased, evading it and poking him again.

This time he managed to catch it, and with his free hand he poked her in the stomach in return. “I could never become bored with you. I simply meant that then we should return to my home.”

Anne tried to pull her hand out of his and he let go, allowing her to poke him again. “Well, if you insist. There is so little to do here, after all. No reading material…”

“Not even a deck of cards,” he said, trying and failing to catch her hands again as she poked him, then finally letting out a mock growl and biting at one.

She let out a faux-shocked gasp at his rude behaviour and he managed to grab her hands again, play-wrestling her into position beneath him. Anne found to her surprise that she was giggling like a girl as they wrestled, and that he was laughing as well, both of them caught in the unrestrained happiness of the moment. “I think we should stay here longer,” Anne announced imperiously. She pushed back against him and he let her, allowing her to roll them over so she could straddle him. She pressed his wrists down to the bed and smirked down into his amused face. “Yield, sir!”

“Make me,” he said, still half-joking, but she could feel him hard against her.

“Yield,” she said again, moving her face closer so he could feel the heat of her breath against his neck, and the mood shifted, laughter dying as it gave way to desire. She rubbed against him, far too sinuous and knowing for how innocent she claimed to be, but there was no suspicion in his face, only want.

“I yield,” he managed. His eyes slid half closed as she slid her body against his once more, and she felt a thrill go through her at the feel of him and the look on his face. “How long would you like to stay?”

“A week,” Anne suggested impulsively, even though everything she was after was at La Fere, even though it would be nothing but a waste of time. She moaned as he freed one hand and slid it down the curve of her body to her hip, closing her own eyes in pleasure. Perhaps not a waste of time.

“As my lady wife desires,” he said, and then neither of them said anything coherent for a very long time.


	4. Nicholas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne meets the in-laws.

Nicolas, the Comte de la Fère, had never considered himself a harsh parent. Oh, he had been tougher on the boys than his wife, God rest her soul, but nothing draconian, only the occasional loss of temper that was quickly regretted. By the standards of the aristocracy he had been positively lax, allowing his sons to roam about as they liked, spend time in the village, visit the city often, and choose their own friends from amongst their peers.

Now they were men, he did not expect his sons to keep him perfectly aware of every movement they took, accepting there were some things parents didn’t need to know. It wasn’t unusual for Thomas to turn up two or even three days late from a trip with friends, grinning that charming smile of his and launching into a story of his reckless adventures.

It wasn’t in Olivier’s character to do such things, however. And even Thomas had certainly never failed to return home a full week after a party had finished. God knew where his son had gone off to.

Nicolas felt his anger returning as he thought of it now. He was often disappointed in his elder son – Olivier’s taciturn nature and dislike of socialising, the dry impertinence of his comments, and his excessive interest in pursuits such as sword fighting at the expense of other interests were all traits Nicolas could neither understand nor excuse. But he’d never before thought Olivier a spiteful person, and he could think of no motive for this besides spite. So Nicolas had sent him to a party he thought boring – well, what of it. This sort of petty revenge was childish and unacceptable.

Nicolas knew both of his sons had assumed he deliberately avoided the hunting party, exaggerating his ill health. He preferred them to think that. In fact, he would have greatly preferred to attend, but his headaches had been getting steadily worse of late. No doubt it would soon pass, but until then, he had thought that he could allow Olivier to take on some of his social and noble duties, framing it as good experience for when he inherited. It seemed that the boy wasn’t as ready for responsibility as he had always seemed, though.

“Father?” Thomas strode in without waiting to be asked, earning himself a scowl. “Any word from Athos yet?”

“Only that first note,” Nicolas said sourly. “Two lines, neither of them really saying anything except that he’s still alive. Typical. Of his letter writing, anyway. Nothing about the rest of this is typical.” 

“It’s rather unlike him, that’s for sure. Perhaps he met a friend there?” Thomas suggested. “Or perhaps his sword finally snapped, and he’s gone to town to buy another, a fancier one this time. Remi will be greatly offended if he did that without a long discussion on exactly what to get, though.”

This was an old point of contention between father and son. “He shouldn’t care if the local blacksmith is offended. It’s one thing to maintain your relationship with the townfolk, quite another to act like one of them. I’ve told him a hundred times that he should try to cultivate a proper distance, as the rest of us do.”

“But who else would let Athos talk swords for fifteen hours?” Thomas said.

“The day your brother can talk about _anything_ for longer than a few minutes, I will throw a party in celebration,” Nicolas said. “Even if it is his damn sword.”

He’d taught Olivier to fence himself, long ago, and had initially been very approving of the boy’s progress, but Olivier’s enthusiasm had soon taken him aback. Fencing was a useful and even admirable skill, but no nobleman should choose fencing drills in the barn over a card party in a warm room. Olivier was not and would never be a soldier. Fighting skill might excite admiration, but it was unlikely to help him make connections or successfully run the estate. 

“Well, at least you have me to hold off the silence,” Thomas said, unperturbed. He leant over the desk to examine the letter Nicolas was writing, giving a charmingly apologetic smile as he did so that got him instantly forgiven for the impoliteness. “It’s no harm if Athos is shy.”

“He’s not shy! He’s just…” But here, Nicolas wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. His son did not seem shy, in truth. If anything, he was all too willing to offer his opinion… provided someone sought it. If no one asked him, he kept his thoughts to himself, uninterested in making his voice heard, indifferent to the notice and respect of his peers. Nicolas sometimes worried that when Olivier took over the estate, he would allow the steward to run the place in his stead, despite the need for noble leadership and judgment. Or worse, he would allow Thomas free rein, and as fond as Nicolas was of his younger son, he also knew the boy was reckless.

Nicolas sighed instead of coming up with something to say, and handed the a pile of recent correspondence to Thomas to read through. The boy may as well make himself useful if he was going to hang about in here. Thomas frowned at the unspoken command but capitulated, pulling out his belt knife to saw open the strings. Nicolas returned his attention to his letter.

Then Thomas suddenly straightened, abandoning the letter he was reading. “Hmm, our wait may be over.”

A moment later Nicolas could hear the coach as well. “About time!” he said, pushing back his chair and standing up, more relieved than he wanted to admit. “I was starting to think he’d gotten himself killed in a duel or some such nonsense.”

Normally, Nicolas would stay in his study and receive his son’s polite greeting after the butler let him in and he’d had a chance to freshen up. This time he was far too irritated to do so. He had a few choice statements about duty and responsibility to share with his eldest. He followed Thomas down the stairs at a slightly more sedate pace and reached the open coach just in time to catch the end of Thomas’s sentence.

“…might’ve run off for a week as well, with that kind of inducement. But what on earth possessed you to bring her _here_?” Thomas looked somewhere between amused and appalled.

“Enough, Thomas,” Athos said firmly, stepping out of the coach as Planchet opened the door.

Now Nicolas had a perfect angle on the inside of the coach as his older son reached out to help his beautiful companion out. He could barely prevent his eyebrows from flying to his hairline as Thomas’s had done. Olivier had never been too concerned with women – what few little affairs of the heart he’d been involved with had all been brief and casual, as far as his father knew. But just one look at the way his son was with the pretty dark-haired woman accompanying him was enough to tell him this was not casual.

He helped her down from the coach as if she was unimaginably precious, smiling at her with a warmth Nicolas had never seen from him before. Once she’d alighted from the coach he kept her hand enfolded in his, pulling it up to press his lips to the back softly, which made her blush prettily. Even while he spoke to his family, it was clear the greater part of his attention was on her, and equally clear that he was utterly infatuated. Olivier was usually impassive, but now his eyes shone with adoration, he leant towards the girl as if magnetically drawn to her, and he kept a grip on her hand as if afraid she would fall away when he let go.

“Father,” Athos said to him. “I apologise for my tardiness.”

“Well, I think we can deduce the reason why,” Thomas said, looking the woman up and down with evident approval. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Athos.”

Athos ignored him. “Father, may I present Madame Anne de Breuil d’Athos de la Fère. My wife.”

Thomas broke off from his appraisal of the woman to gape in complete shock. Nicolas’s eyes bulged as he stared in absolute incomprehension, unable to credit that Athos was in earnest. His son had never so much as brought a friend to visit without politely informing him. Now without the slightest bit of warning, he brought a _wife_? A wife they’d never met, never even heard of. The girl’s dress and jewellery were too plain, even for travelling clothes, so Nicolas found himself absolutely sure that she was not from their sphere, was from nowhere near their sphere, was probably no more than a distant relation to nobility, if that. Had some fourth-cousin of a baron entrapped his son, seduced him? He had never thought his son so lost to all sense of his station and duty as to bring home a woman they’d never met to wed.

And how could they be _married_? Nothing had been agreed, no banns posted, no approval had been given. Nicolas wondered dizzily if Athos was exaggerating, if in fact he meant betrothed, or perhaps even just that he would like to be betrothed and had come home to introduce them to the object of his affections before he took further steps. His son was quiet, meticulous, never impulsive, and weddings were not a small or easy thing.

In the ringing silence caused by this statement, Nicolas saw Athos’s hand tighten around the woman’s, and him mouth a quick apology to her. To her credit, she seemed mostly unfazed by the horrified response, only tightening her own grip and putting on a bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Nicolas could practically feel the butler’s avid curiosity radiating from behind him, and the groom there to store the coach and rub down the horses looked just as interested. Planchet maintained a dignified silence in response, of course, but judging by the coachman’s face the rest of the servants would hear everything he knew by nightfall. It was insupportable they make such a show in front of the domestics. Had Olivier lost his mind completely?

“Good God,” Thomas said eventually, awed voice breaking the silence. “You’re not serious, are you?”

Nicolas found his voice again. “My study,” he bit out harshly, “Now.”

“Of course,” Athos said, glancing down at the woman again to check how she was holding up. She gave him a faint smile, seemingly exhausted and overwhelmed but still keeping together, and he pulled her slightly closer to him as if to support her weight. “I suggest the servants see to my wife’s comfort while we discuss this.”

“She’s can wait out here, or if you must bring her in, she can join us in the study,” Nicolas said, tone final. By God, he wasn’t going to see some strange young woman settled into the house before he worked out what was going on. Planchet could escort her to the local inn – or, even better, set her on her way to her own home with all her belongings – once they dealt with this.

“She can join us once I’m sure you’ll treat her with the civility she’s due,” Athos said, and there was some of the same hardness in his tone that his father had employed. Nicolas was used to his son’s stubbornness, but this was something else, the steeliness in his son’s expression quite unfamiliar to him. “Until then, I would like her to be comfortable, not shut up in this coach for longer.”

“Athos,” the woman said softly. “It’s all right -”

“Please, Anne,” Athos murmured back, pulling her closer for a moment, the stress on his face fading as he kissed her cheek. “They’ll treat you well, I promise, or live to regret it.” He looked up. “Thomas, will you go with her and make sure -”

“You think I’m missing this conversation for anything? Planchet will make sure the staff take care of Mademoiselle Anne, I’m sure,” Thomas said without missing a beat. “I’ll be in the study with you both.”

“Madame de la Fère,” Athos corrected. “That’s her name now.” He reached his hand up to tuck a lock of Anne’s hair behind her ear, looking down at her with a degree of affection that made Nicolas profoundly uneasy. She reached up to cup Athos’s cheek for a moment, eyes searching his, and gave him another of those weak smiles that made Nicolas feel like a brute for scaring her. He suspected that was deliberate.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, voice growing stronger as she spoke. “Send a servant when you wish for me.”

“I always wish for you,” he said. With a last quick kiss and hand-squeeze he let Anne go, visibly reluctant, and turned to follow his furious father up the stairs, Thomas bringing up the rear.

Nicolas wasn’t sure he’d ever been so angry at his son. The door to the study had barely shut before he turned on him, hissing, “You are already promised to _Catherine_.”

“Not officially,” Athos said, not missing a beat. “And now I never will be, father, because I am already married. I will make whatever amends I can to Catherine and her father, but that dream of yours is done.”

“Is that why you did this?” Nicolas said bitingly. “You didn’t want to marry the de Garouville girl, so you went out and found the first pretty young -”

“Be very careful what you say next,” Athos warned. “You are talking of my wife.”

“If you were so averse to wedding Catherine, you should have told me!” Nicolas said.

“This has nothing to do with Catherine, only that I will never feel for her what I feel for Anne,” Athos said. “I cannot imagine feeling this way about anyone but Anne. Almost from the moment I saw her, I knew I wanted her as my wife.”

“When you say wife…” Thomas began.

“I mean _wife_. We were married by special license eight days ago.”

Thomas gave a low whistle of disbelief. Nicolas just stared.

Athos reached into his shirt and let a sheaf of papers tied with string fall onto the desk next to him. “Accounts from out witnesses and our priest. There are copies. Our marriage is entered in the registry. It is completely legal, I assure you.”

“You’ve gone mad,” Nicolas said, voice harsh. “You’ve lost all sense of your duty and position. Who even is this girl? How did she persuade you to throw away the tenets of a lifetime?” He let his face twist in disgust. “Or can I guess?”

“This is the last warning I will give,” Athos said in a low, controlled voice, and for the first time Nicolas felt intimidated by his eldest son. “Keep your tongue civil when you speak of my wife.”

Thomas shook his head, still incredulous. “Since we’ve never even _met_ the girl before, you can hardly take any comment as a personal affront. Who _is_ she?”

Athos relaxed his stance a little, but still glared at Nicolas, ready to leap on the slightest hint of disparagement about Anne. “Her name is – was – Anne de Breuil. She grew up in Paris. She attended the General’s party with her cousin.”

Married eight days, Nicolas thought, still stuck on that. That meant that a woman he’d never even met could be carrying the next generation of La Fères. Even if he could get the marriage dissolved, there was a chance he would make his grandchild illegitimate. Could he risk that? Of course, if the girl was with child, he could ensure she had enough coin to raise it well without keeping either of them at La Fère, there was no shame in doing that. However, Nicolas automatically shied away from the thought of rejecting a grandchild, and he could only imagine Olivier’s reaction would be worse still. If he pursued an annulment for his son, Nicolas ran the risk of damaging their relationship irreparably.

Not to mention the possible scandal if the tale of the temporary marriage got out, the disapproval of the church and their peers, and the risk of Olivier continuing to insist he was married regardless of the law. It was unlikely his son would simply move on from this and accept his responsibility to marry Catherine de Garouville. The boy had always been consistent, if nothing else, a trait that Nicolas found as confusing as anything else about Athos. The thought of accepting the girl who had entrapped his son and seduced him into forgetting his duties into their family was abhorrent, but Nicolas had been playing cards all his life and he knew there were times it was necessary to recognise that the hand was lost instead of continuing to raise the stakes. Unfortunately, quick and quiet acceptance might be the best way to resolve this situation.

“Who’s her family?” Nicolas asked bluntly. Nothing could make this liaison acceptable, not when his son had entered into it without his permission, but connections or a good dowry could at least soothe some of the sting. The de Garouville girl would have brought land with her and perhaps even a decent sum, provided her father hadn’t gambled it all away by then. 

“I just told you her name is de Breuil,” Athos replied.

Nicolas waved a hand dismissively. “I meant family that matters, and you know it. What are her connections?”

“If you mean connections at our level, she has none,” Athos said flatly. “Her immediate family were respectable, but if anyone in her family is titled, the degree of relationship is remote enough that she is not aware of it.”

There was a long pause where Nicolas struggled not to say anything that might bring back his son’s fury, before eventually giving up on tact. “Did you _meet_ her family before this imprudent marriage, at least?” he snapped. “To ask permission, even, or settle details? They must be delighted their daughter has married so far above her place. Does she bring a respectable portion, at least?”

Athos rolled his eyes. “We hardly need the money, father. Anne’s family are all deceased apart from a few cousins who are of no account, so she needed no one’s permission to wed. And to be absolutely clear, no, they were not rich or well-connected or in any other way useful to you.”

“So she brings nothing to the marriage,” Nicolas said flatly.

“She brought herself,” Athos said. “Luckily, that’s all I wanted.”

“Listen to yourself, boy! You sound like some… some foolish troubadour warbling about love. We don’t marry for sentiment,” Nicolas said, gentling his tone and really trying to make his son understand. “It’s about continuation of the line. Not just building the inheritance with land and money and connections, but ensuring you don’t water down the blood. Catherine de Garouville would have brought more than a dowry, she would have brought her noble blood to pass on to your children, to my grandchildren. That’s the kind of wife you need, one of breeding.”

“Anne _has_ breeding, father,” Athos said. “It’s not as if I went down to the village and married a tavern girl. Anne’s family might not have been noble or wealthy, but they were still gentry, and if you speak to her you’ll see she’s eminently suitable.”

“Not _that_ suitable,” Thomas said. “Oh, don’t attack me, brother. I just mean – well, if God had meant her to be a comtesse, she would have been born into our sphere. A love match is all very well, but one with no connections at all?”

“She could be the daughter of a duc and it still wouldn’t change the fact you went behind my back and did this improperly,” Nicolas said. He was always quick to anger, but it generally faded quickly as well, and now as it subsided he found that underneath it he was hurt. It was infuriating that Athos had deliberately backed him into a corner with this, but it was more painful by far that he had not asked for his father’s opinion or even his blessing. 

Athos sighed. “I apologise for that,” he said softly. “But I could hardly ask her to abandon her home and come with me on the promise of maybe, someday achieving my father’s permission to wed. Tell the truth, if I had brought her here to get your approval, would you have given it? Or would you have betrothed me to Catherine and tried to send her away?”

“I… I would have…” Well, of course Nicolas wouldn’t have given his approval. If Athos had brought the girl here without any official connection, the coach would already be on its way with her inside. And if Athos had promised her he would marry her, well, a betrothal that hadn’t been witnessed or agreed by the parents of either party or the rest of their peers was comparatively easy to break.

But now a wedding had taken place in the sight of God. It was possible to annul or dissolve such unions, but not without considerable effort, and Athos must have known he’d hesitate to involve the law and the church in personal family matters. “Your concern shouldn’t be that I would have refused, but that I would have been right to refuse,” Nicolas said. “You must see this is madness.” 

“Whatever your opinion of it, father, it is done,” Athos said. “And I won’t allow you to undo it. You may as well meet Anne and take her measure. Perhaps then you’ll understand why I did this.”

“I already understand,” Thomas said jokingly, shock and concern apparently subsiding. He had always taken after his father in disposition, his moods shifting quickly and easily, nothing like Athos’s steady certainty. Now he received a glare from his brother that he cheerfully ignored. “At least, I understand the impulse. But seriously, Athos, there are women you marry, and then there are women you don’t. Girls from the lower classes are happy enough with our time and our coin, there’s no need to offer more.”

“I told you, Anne’s family is genteel. Hardly ‘the lower classes’.” Athos said, scowling again. “And if you so much as imply she’s that kind of woman again, then I’ll make sure you regret it. You know you’re match for me with a sword.”

“No one is,” Thomas said. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t have spoken so. I apologise. I’ll send a servant to bring her to us, shall I?”

He went to the door and spoke to the servant there, while Nicolas and Athos stared each other down.

“I will be polite to her, Olivier, but don’t expect miracles,” Nicolas warned quietly. “It seems you’ve let me no choice but to accept this, but how can I ever approve of the woman who convinced you to forget your duty to our family?”

“By remembering she is now also your family,” Athos said, just as quietly. “By remembering that her children will be your family as well.”

It seemed like only moments later that Anne stepped into the room. Nicolas, a fair man, admitted that he could see why his son was so captivated – the girl wasn’t just pretty, she was truly lovely. She stood well, she moved gracefully, and she somehow wore her simple dress with enough style that it seemed far less shabby than it was. There was nothing coarse or vulgar about her appearance, at least.

“Anne, may I present my father Nicolas, the Comte de la Fère,” Athos said, resting his hand lightly on his new wife’s back. 

Nicolas reached out to give her hand a perfunctory kiss as she offered it.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Anne said, curtseying with the kind of elegance a duchesse would envy. Her voice was sweet and low, with the barest hint of a fashionable Parisian accent, and her eyes as she raised them to his were untroubled by any sign of anger or fear.

“Is it?” Nicolas said with a harsh bark of laughter, unable to stop himself.

“Father,” Athos said icily.

“It is,” Anne said, apparently unperturbed, inclining her head slightly in a pretty show of deference.

Nicolas admitted, grudgingly, that the girl had poise – it was hardly the kind of greeting a young bride would expect from her husband’s family, but she was still navigating the situation with more dignity than anyone else was managing.

“And this is Thomas, my brother,” Athos continued.

Thomas took his new sister’s hand and kissed it, receiving a curtsey that was just as graceful but not nearly as deep as the one Nicolas had gotten.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Anne, and even more pleased to welcome you to La Fère now that my brother has stopped hiding you away,” Thomas said playfully. “I can call you Anne, can’t I? Now you are family, it would feel strange indeed to call you Mademoiselle de Breuil, or worse, Madame. You don’t seem nearly old enough to be a Madame. And you must call me Thomas as well – I insist.”

He gave her a roguish wink that made Nicolas long to slap the back of his head. Normally he might have been amused by his son’s playful speech, but today the light tone annoyed him, worsening his mood still further. Nicolas didn’t slap him, of course – it was too unseemly, for one, and his son was an adult, now, however little he acted like it sometimes. Thomas charmed people so easily it seemed like an unconscious reflex more than a deliberate aim, but this was hardly an appropriate time to flirt, however harmless his intentions.

Athos, used to his brother’s light-hearted teasing, seemed unbothered by the interaction, but a slight frown creased Anne’s face and she pulled her hand back more quickly than she had from Nicolas. Thomas held onto it for a second as she tugged, looking surprised – he was more accustomed to the ladies he addressed like that blushing than recoiling – but after a moment recalled himself and released her, stepping back with a confused smile. 

“If you insist, then of course I will call you Thomas,” Anne said, a little more coolly. Her tone warmed again when Athos gave her a concerned look, though, and she gave Thomas a smile that looked almost sincere. “And Anne is fine, of course. What else should my new brother call me but my name?”

It was strange to think that she was now his daughter. Nicolas had grown accustomed to the idea of Catherine as a daughter someday. It wasn’t that he was fond of her, exactly – she seemed too brittle and cold for him to be easy around her the way he was with his sons – but he had known her almost since birth, and he was used to her.

“Perhaps you would like to rest now,” Nicolas said, abruptly tired. His headache came back in full force. “We can continue to speak tomorrow.”

The next few days didn’t reconcile Nicolas completely to his son’s choice of bride, but it did lay some immediate concerns to rest – Anne knew how to eat neatly, didn’t lack for sense or for conversation, and she adapted quickly to any signs of disapproval or censure from her new family. Watching her, Nicolas thought that she seemed unlikely to embarrass them, and that his son could have picked worse.

Watching Athos, Nicolas could see that he had changed, as well, and not just in the open and uncomplicated joy that he seemed to exude at every waking moment. There was a certainty to his son that hadn’t been there before, a willingness to speak his opinions and act on them. Nicolas approved of it. He would make a better comte than Nicolas had thought.

He found himself also approving of Anne more and more as days passed, and he thought it was due to how the two of them changed the tone of the old house. Nicolas wasn’t deaf to the sound of laughter carrying from other rooms, or blind to the way they looked at each other whenever they were in the same space, and he certainly wasn’t immune to being entertained by the constant repartee they threw back and forth. He’d never considered his son funny before, but he was beginning to realise what he had taken for sulky disdain for him had in fact been a kind of dry, clever wit that Anne brought out with her own.

There were also times when Nicolas found himself absenting any room the two of them shared, dragging Thomas with him whenever possible, because it was simply too awkward and uncomfortable to stay in their presence. He was amused instead of horrified by the couple’s excessive adoration of each other, and suspected that Olivier would have an heir sooner rather than later, but God’s blood, that didn’t mean he had to _witness_ any part of it. Still, it was oddly sweet, if somewhat sickening, and Nicolas admitted to himself that perhaps Anne was quite suitable for his son after all, whatever her family.

Unfortunately, there were other things to worry about besides Anne’s suitability, or her relationship with his son. Most of their acquaintance had assumed Olivier would marry Catherine, and that assumption hurt her chances at marrying elsewhere. The relationship between the families turned chilly. Catherine stopped being a regular visitor to the household, and de Garouville had apparently said some rude things about the La Fères to the rest of their gaming partners.

After speaking to his younger son, Nicolas decided to talk de Garouville about the possibility of a betrothal between Thomas and Catherine. The de Garouvilles might feel slighted by getting a younger son instead of the heir, but it would prevent any rumours suggesting Catherine had been rejected by the La Fères as unsuitable for some reason, and remove any hint of impropriety in her and Athos’s long friendship. There were many other things to recommend the idea – Catherine had been friends with Thomas as long as Athos, Thomas was willing if not precisely enthusiastic, and it would tie their land together as planned. It was a perfect solution.

Nicolas found himself oddly content, despite his headaches.


	5. Anne

Long before there was a woman named Anne, there was a pickpocket named Charlotte, and she lived in a whorehouse.

Her mother was one of the most popular women there, young and fresh-faced and, above all, professional. When her rue tea had failed, she’d tried two different concoctions of pennyroyal oil and tansy in an attempt to abort, and both laid her out for days but neither had any effect on the child growing inside her. To her credit, she never blamed or resented Charlotte for her survival. Instead, when she told the story, it was with approval – she assured her little daughter she was stubborn, a fighter, a survivor. She was right.

The brothel was in a side street at the edge of the Court of Miracles, and most of its custom came from there. That meant that business was erratic – periods went by where there were almost no successful scores and the men who came in were grouchy and irritable and would never pay, and then someone would pull off a major theft or blackmail and the men would happily throw about riches in return for ale and women. Then there were the days when a scam ended in arrest or disaster, and old Clarice ran through her stores of sleeping drops to try and keep the foul mood from spilling over into violence.

Charlotte slept in spare corners when trade was slow and on the street outside when it was fast. She received leftover food, old clothes, and money from the women in the brothel on the rare good days, dodged the rough, unkind men and their cuffs on the more common bad days, and helped by pouring wine or fetching food for the clients. For the most part, she took care of herself, picking pockets on the street outside, snatching food from careless vendors, and joining in the little schemes and tussles of the Court children. Her mother worked enough she rarely saw her, and most of the other women in the brothel were busy, stressed, drunk, drugged, nasty, or otherwise unsatisfactory company for a little girl. The chief exception was Clarice.

Clarice was the oldest woman there (by far) and Charlotte was the youngest, and somehow that created a bond between them, even if it was only the bond of the largely ignored. Clarice was the one to teach Charlotte to read, starting with both of their names, and leading immediately to a huge tantrum since Charlotte stubbornly refused to believe that a lone ‘c’ could have two different sounds within the same word and insisted Clarice was pronouncing her own name wrongly. After a few other early struggles, however, Charlotte learnt quickly and almost impatiently, devouring words with the same ferocity as she tore apart her meals. Even after she could read and write with unnecessary fluency for a guttersnipe, though, Charlotte continued to call her teacher Clarik, a small sign of affection Clarice tried to pretend she was indifferent to. 

Clarice had been an herbalist in a small village in England, but she never said which one, and she never said how she’d learnt her skills, and she never admitted why she left for France, and she never explained her knowledge of potions that a normal village herbalist shouldn’t be aware of. It hardly mattered, since no one asked those questions except Charlotte, who was as hungry for knowledge as she was for food. Clarice was invaluable in the brothel – she mixed rue tea for prevention and made stronger mixes of abortifacients when the tea failed, she did her best to treat any illnesses that occurred, and she knew a dozen ways to keep an unruly customer asleep or otherwise incapable.

For as long as she could remember, Charlotte was involved in the latter. Even the most violent client rarely questioned a free drink brought to him by a little girl. It was easy enough for her to use her quick thieves’ hands to add a few drops of some liquid that would leave him groggy and confused. Soon Charlotte stopped asking Clarice which clients she should drug and made her own shrewd judgments about how much of threat each man was, keeping a bottle with her at all times. It was a small step from learning the correct doses to learning how to make them herself, and an even smaller step from there to learn all the potions Clarice knew. There were drops that would make a man vomit uncontrollably, ones that would make him hallucinate, ones that would make him sleep. This kind had to be imbibed, this kind only inhaled, this one was best pushed into their skin somehow. Charlotte learnt it all, eyes too sharp and knowing for her age, burning with intensity in her pale little face, almost unnerving the older woman with her eagerness.

As she started to grow from a grubby, underfed child to a scrawny pre-teen, Charlotte became less and less a part of the day-to-day life in the brothel. Charlotte’s mother had always been very clear that the scrawny little child with the curly hair was not for sale, but as she started to show signs of the woman she would one day be, the clients stopped listening. Charlotte didn’t take after her mother in appearance or personality, and she had no intention of echoing her career either, so something had to change. The brothel quickly became more of a base than a home, somewhere to stop by for a quick nap or occasionally a crust of bread before she headed off into the street again. She started to run full-time with the other children in the Court of Miracles, a mob of foul-mouthed, grimy cutthroats-in-training, pinching coins and handkerchiefs, avoiding blows from the rising stars of the Court like Sarazin, forming little alliances and betraying them throughout the course of a day. Charlotte was quick-witted, sharp-tongued and utterly ruthless, and fit into the Court like a hand in a glove. On the rare occasions she was in the brothel during waking hours, it was normally just to see her mother or Clarice.

Even for a thief as naturally talented as Charlotte, stealing was dangerous. She’d learnt to fight pretty well in scrums with the Court children, but in most other fights, she was smaller, weaker, or outnumbered. She had knives she’d starved to afford, and they helped, but she still had a few close calls. Apart from her victims, she was also used to having her little scores stolen off her by larger thieves, who often left a bruise or two in repayment but sometimes threatened to leave more. She started to use the potions Clarice had taught her how to make to even the odds. None were deadly, but they could be very unpleasant, and Charlotte learnt very quickly that the only aim in a fight was to get your enemy down and keep them down. If you could do it before the fight started, so much the better. She carried a little container of herbs and potions with her at all times.

When Charlotte was about twelve, sickness came to the brothel and to the Court, shortly followed by religion, which was even more destructive. Clarice died. Charlotte’s mother died. Charlotte herself didn’t die, but her name did, and the container of herbs and potions was smashed to pieces in the street by a priest who didn’t even know what it was.

Anne owned a similar container now, albeit a larger one, since she had to fit items like rue tea in it as well. It was well hidden in the room she shared with Athos. Charlotte might be long gone, but Anne still knew how to make the potions, and she still automatically reached for them when she sensed a threat. And she found herself reaching towards where she used to hide her potions a lot during those first few weeks at La Fère.

It was always in response to her new brother-in-law, Thomas, although she couldn’t put her finger on precisely why he made her desperately want to fight or flee whenever they shared the same space. He never said anything too rude, or did anything too inappropriate, and whenever she was with him he was friendly and obliging in every way apart from his incessant teasing, but despite that he made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Anne trusted her instincts. If he had walked into the brothel when she was a child she would have handed him a mug with more sleeping drops than ale. Instead, she was forced to smile pleasantly when he entered a room.

“You look splendid today, Anne,” he said cheerfully as he strode towards the breakfast table, looking rakishly handsome as always. “Truly, my brother is lucky I didn’t see you first.” Thomas gave Athos a cheeky grin and received his customary eye roll in return.

Anne suspected Thomas probably spent a lot of energy ensuring that he looked appropriately debonair, carefully gauging the correct amount of stubble and the fit of his shirt, but she didn’t judge him for that. There was no harm in vanity. Somehow, it was the vitality and enthusiasm he exuded that concerned her more – to most women it was probably attractive, but to her it evoked memories of Sarazin, always at his brightest and loudest before he stuck a knife in someone. Thomas was always keyed-up, almost crackling with energy, and it left Anne on edge, unsure what extreme of emotion he would jump to next.

“I suppose that makes me lucky as well,” Anne said lightly, sliding her hand into Athos’s.

Athos smiled. Anne was becoming used to the strange twist in her chest when he did so. “Oh, yes?”

“After all, it would have been rather awkward if I had cruelly rejected your brother before I met you,” Anne said. “His ego would never have taken it.”

“My ego would have done fine,” Thomas said, grabbing an apple off the table. He sounded good-humoured, but Anne had caught the flash of anger in his eyes when she mocked him – she thought Thomas wasn’t used to being mocked, especially by women.

Anne was trying to adopt something of the teasing older sister in her interactions with him, in the hope that he would tone down his playful touching and flirtation in response. She knew if she challenged him about the way he treated her, Thomas would simply throw his hands up in the air. I’m teasing, he would claim, just joking. All a little fun. Even Athos knows it’s harmless. I would never do anything. She would seem uptight, paranoid even, ranting about how her so-charming brother-in-law shouldn’t kiss her cheek in greeting.

But when he did, her every instinct threw up warning signals. He didn’t make the kiss last too long or press too hard or anything else, it was simply a brotherly greeting, but Anne could feel herself stiffen each time. When Nicolas gave one of his rare fatherly kisses to the top of her head, Anne leaned slightly into them, warmed by his growing affection for her and the happiness this gave Athos. When Thomas pressed his wet lips against her cheekbone she didn’t want to lean into it, she wanted to lean away, she wanted to leave the room, she wanted to wipe the feel of it off her cheek, and she didn’t know why.

“If you say so, Thomas,” Anne said, still light and joking. She found she desperately wanted Thomas to think of her as only his older sister, sooner rather than later. She thought she’d be able to sense it when he did, when the intentness in his gaze faded to indifference. “I suppose your ego must be healthy enough to survive almost anything, come to think of it, even the cruellest of rejections.”

Athos raised an eyebrow. “A hit,” he said, amused, and Anne saw again that flash in Thomas’s eyes. “If your rejections are so cruel, I’m even more grateful you didn’t reject me.”

“Well, unlike Thomas, _your_ ego is fragile beyond belief,” she said, leaning over to kiss him gently, even though it was completely improper to do so at the breakfast table. Heat shuddered through her as he opened his mouth under the lazy pressure from hers, and she pulled back before it could become even more inappropriate. “Why do you think I married you, after all? I knew it would simply crush you to be refused and I couldn’t bear to do it.”

“Your kindness is an example to us all,” Athos said, a little roughly, clearly wanting to draw her back down to him. She gave him a cat-like smile, leaning into him a little to demonstrate her kindness further, and his eyes darkened. Anne wondered if she should suggest he do some paperwork at the desk in their room – a rather transparent cover, but one that they had used regularly since they returned to La Fère. 

Thomas rapped his hand on the table with an almost angry force, though when Anne and Athos looked at him, startled, he was wearing his most amiable smile. “Enough of that, brother. Father wants us to speak to the smith about the carriage wheels today, remember?”

“Of course,” Athos said regretfully. “Would you like to join us, Anne? Remi is a friend of mine.”

“He likes swords,” Thomas said, by way of explanation. “Not much call for fancy swords in Pinon, but he enjoys talking about them. Excessively.”

“Not many of the villagers are educated, but Remi is, at least a little,” Athos told her. “His family have been blacksmiths here since Pinon was founded and they’re well-respected by the community. He’s also the closest Pinon has to a bailiff – he deals with the drunks and wife-beaters, and works as a sort of liaison when we have to settle larger disputes.”

“And yet at the end of the day, he’s still a villager, and he still thinks like a villager,” Thomas said merrily. “Or as _little_ as a villager, I suppose I mean. Half the things Athos says fly right over his head. He’s probably too busy worrying about making shovels and pitchforks to focus on the words, even if he could understand them.” He grinned at Anne, inviting her to share the joke, and she smiled tightly back. 

“Thomas,” Nicolas said in warning, entering the room late as usual. “Don’t mock the villagers, it’s vulgar and ill-bred. They live well within the scope God has given them. It’s beneath your consequence to pass comment.” He delivered the reproach with very little conviction, closing his eyes as if exhausted.

Thomas rolled his eyes, irritation briefly overtaking him at the censure. “I agree that it’s beneath my consequence, father, but I don’t believe anyone in the world should be so low as to be beneath my amusement. Besides, you know the man – don’t tell me you think he’s an intellect.”

“He’s a good man,” Athos said. 

“And a very good smith,” Thomas said. “I can value him as that and only that. You should follow my example, Athos. You’ll be comte someday, and how are the villagers going to respect you if they see you grubbing about as if you’re one of them? You need to maintain a proper distance.”

Nicolas gave his younger son a tired but approving smile. “That’s true enough. There’s no harm in being civil, of course, but being too familiar with the villagers will do nothing for your authority.”

“I think I will join you,” Anne decided. “I’ll go put on a dress more suitable for riding.” She had a new one that was white, but of a simple cut and fabric, so it would at least be easy to clean off any stains.

She wanted to meet one of her husband’s friends, especially since he didn’t have a great many of them, but she also dreaded the thought of staying behind without him. Nicolas had started to talk to her about taking on some of the late comtesse’s responsibilities. The housekeeper had been handling everything since her death, but Nicolas fervently believed that the organisation of the house, the staff, the menus, the livery, even the decor would remain of inferior quality until again managed by an elegantly bred woman. It seemed the more Nicolas approved of her, the less he remembered that even Anne’s false backstory had not included the kind of training required to manage a large household.

Anne was an expert at faking her way through situations. Unfortunately, these were situations where she had no practical knowledge at all to base her responses on. She felt like she was scrambling to catch up. At least for now she could copy some of what the housekeeper did and bluff her way through mistakes, and surely the previous comtesse had kept some kind of records, but managing staff and menus was the least of what the lady of the house was expected to do. Besides anything else, they would eventually expect her to occupy her spare time with elegantly bred activities like fine needlework and painting watercolours, and no one had ever bothered to teach her skills like that. She had all the skills required in a mistress, but very few of those required in a wife, especially a noble wife.

If it weren’t for the fact that Athos rather spectacularly undermined her common sense, she probably would have fled already, weak excuses about clothing or heirlooms notwithstanding.

But unfortunately, there was Athos to consider. The strange attraction to him she felt didn’t seem to be disappearing. If anything, it had strengthened over the past few weeks. She spent a lot of time dragging him to their room or being dragged there by him. She felt somehow cold and bereft when they were not touching each other, and her body barely seemed like it belonged to her when they were, it was so full of crazed longing for him not to let her go. The pleasure they gave each other was intense, overwhelming, unbelievable, leaving her gasping and confused every time. It was a type of madness she had never experienced before. 

And worse than that madness – because desire, at least, was easily explainable, if somewhat insane – was the rest of it. The urge to curl around him in the night so that she slept half on top of him. The impulse to share with him every idle thought that sprang into her mind. The concern she felt on his behalf when she recognised his father’s worsening health. The foolish smile that curled her lips when she thought of something he’d said or done. The laughter that took her over as they played at wrestling, or hide and seek, or other foolish childish games she’d never played before. The glances he gave her, sometimes full of shared jokes and secrets, sometimes hot with just the thought of her. The way his every statement, every story, every quip seemed to resonate within her, so that she thought she’d remember his every word until the day she died, just as she would remember every touch. 

She couldn’t leave him while he fascinated her so. She especially couldn’t leave while he felt the same, partly because it made her uncomfortable to think of hurting him, and partly because she wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t chase after her. Anne thought she could fake her way through it for another month or two, and her unexplainable obsession with him would subside, and his absurd infatuation with her would fade away too, and then they’d both be glad to see the back of each other. He could curse her memory, get an annulment by way of fraud, and marry someone more suitable. She could adopt a new name, flee to a city somewhere, perhaps even return to Paris – she thought she could probably avoid Sarazin if she stayed entirely in the richest parts of the city. After all, she would have the money to do so. She could go back to Paris rich and full of plans she actually had the skills to carry out.

When Anne returned in a more appropriate dress for riding, Nicolas was the only one there, since Thomas and Athos were off preparing the horses. Nicolas gave her a paternal smile, though she could tell a headache still pained him.

Anne curtseyed low to him before going to find Athos. When Athos had talked of his family, she’d assumed his father would be the one impossible to win round. Instead, a carefully calibrated mix of sweetness, unaffectedness and respectful deference were all it took for Nicolas to quickly let go of his high-handed disapproval. She’d rarely manipulated men without seduction, in the past, and she was proud of the results. The old man was only a few smiles and curtseys away from half-believing he’d picked her out as a daughter-in-law himself.

Anne was a very good rider. However, her expertise was due to necessity – when you had a sack full of someone else’s silver, covering ground quickly was the most important skill you could have. Sitting a horse in the proper, feminine way was more of a challenge. When Athos helped her mount up, holding onto her for just long enough for her mind to skip to other activities, she had to wrench back all her concentration to remember to move to side-saddle and arrange her skirts prettily, instead of automatically shifting into a better position for hard riding.

The smithy wasn’t very far away and soon Athos was helping her dismount, whispering into her ear, “It’s very distracting to watch you ride.”

“Perhaps I’ll give you a private performance later,” she whispered back, and he choked, caught between laughter and lust.

Remi proved to be a tall, rather serious looking man, without the heavy muscles Anne had assumed a blacksmith would need. He greeted Athos with enthusiasm but none of the familiarity Nicolas disapproved of, greeted Thomas with no enthusiasm at all, and was introduced to Anne with a great deal of stuttering and touching his forelock and blushing. She thought, amused, that he must not have a great deal of experience with women.

“We’re here to talk about the carriage wheels,” Thomas broke in eventually, frustrated.

Remi invited them inside and rushed about clearing things off or away so Anne wouldn’t get the slightest spot of dirt or dust on her dress, and Anne recognised his type. Gallant and admiring, the sort who would pine from a distance but would never even dare to dream of kissing the object of his affection. He would have done well at court, where that kind of devotion was always fashionable. As the wife of his lord’s son, she was leagues above him and completely untouchable, just the right type of person for him to idealise and fall into hopeless adoration for, and he probably would have fallen for anyone in her position. Regardless, he was no threat, not the way she felt sure Thomas was. Anne doubted he would ever do more than blush and stutter in her presence, and if he wrote poetry or some such thing, she was very sure he’d never expect her to listen to it.

Even Athos noticed his friend’s fervent admiration for her, and leant over to her again as they left to say, “I think you’ve got an admirer.” He sounded amused rather than jealous.

“Only one?” 

“Perhaps more than one,” he acknowledged in a low voice, taking her hand quickly and kissing it.

Anne wondered if Athos ever really got jealous. He’d seemed on the edge of it during her first few conversations with Thomas, but not in a way that suggested he expected Thomas to try and seduce her – it was more like he was worried she would prefer Thomas to him, the way he seemed convinced everyone did, the way Thomas himself seemed to assume she would. Once she’d made it perfectly clear with her responses that her favourite de la Fère brother was and would always be the elder, he’d relaxed completely. The way she spoke to Thomas now, with the slightly condescending amusement of a sister speaking to her treasured but foolish younger brother, seemed to lay any of his remaining concerns to rest. 

“I don’t have anything else pressing to do today,” Athos said, this time holding her far too long as he helped her into the saddle.

Anne pretended to be slightly unbalanced so she could press her hands against his chest to stabilise, and she gloried at the way his breathing quickened. “Oh? Did you have something in mind to fill the hours?”

“We’ll join you at home later,” Athos said to Thomas, but his eyes stayed fixed on his wife. “Anne has seen so little of the place. I want to show her around some more.”

“You must show me all the prettiest spots,” Anne agreed, also unable to focus on anything but him as he reluctantly moved away. She automatically shifted so that she was straddling the horse, ready to ride, but the saddle got in the way and with a faint flush she returned to the correct feminine posture. Luckily, Athos had been too busy mounting his own horse to notice, but his brother gave her a look of confusion.

“I will see you later, than,” Thomas said, with a roll of his eyes, and he mounted up and disappeared.

“As nice as the town is, I would prefer to see less crowded areas. Nature is so uplifting, isn’t it?” Anne said to her husband. Summer was nearly over, now, but the warmth lingered, leaves yet to fall and flowers yet to wither, and she was sure they could find somewhere lovely. Not that she would pay attention to anything but him.

“I find it positively inspiring,” Athos agreed, nudging his horse into a faster gait. “There’s a meadow nearby that is especially picturesque at this time of year.”

Anne laughed and urged her horse into a canter as well to follow him, not caring where they went as long as they were alone together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you're wondering why there's the bit with her learning how to make some drugs and stuff, I just wanted to come up with a reason Milady has chloroform in the show, as well as give a sort of start to explaining her later poisoning skills. Like I said, I know this doesn't resemble any other canon for Milady's past, but who cares? :)


	6. Catherine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: any views expressed by Catherine (and later Thomas, when he gets a POV section) are absolutely not my views. They're terrible people.

Catherine de Garouville felt her lips thin as her carriage approached La Fère, and tried to force her face back into aloof blankness before any of the servants could see. It wouldn’t do for them to know their mistress’s thoughts.

It was just so _unfair_. Catherine would be an ideal comtesse, intelligent, proper, articulate, well bred, and dignified. She had spent years waiting for her father and the comte to finally sort out her betrothal to Athos. She’d been patient when the comte claimed his son was too young for such a thing, even though this was obviously untrue. She’d been pleasant whenever she and Athos interacted, entering into his interests and trying to foster an appropriate level of intimacy without being too familiar for a noble couple-to-be. She’d been a comfort to the whole household after the death of the late comtesse, visiting often to assure the house was running smoothly and the servants were not lazing about in the wake of their mistress’s passing.

And after all this, to be passed over for a woman whose name no one had ever heard of? To be handed carelessly off to a younger son as if she were not a de Garouville, with the blood of a dozen generations of nobility running through her veins? It was atrocious.

Oh, she would have considered herself fond of Thomas if she was fond of anyone. He was a bit too free with his language for her tastes, a bit too lively perhaps, far too prone to scandal, gaming and women when he was away from his father’s eye, but those were flaws she was sure a caring wife could either correct or withstand. At present he spent much of the year in Paris or at his friends’ estates, and she doubted that would change, but it hardly bothered her – in fact, it might suit her better than a husband constantly underfoot. Thomas was handsome, and he thought as he should about most subjects, and most importantly, he was a la Fère.

But he was not a comte. Neither was Athos, of course, but he was likely to be one someday soon, according to rumour – Lady Catherine would never have cheapened herself by indulging in servant’s gossip, but one heard things regardless. The maids chattered like birds about whatever entered their silly heads. Even without the rumour, Catherine probably would have noticed that Nicolas de la Fère seemed quite ill lately. So Athos would be comte, finally, but Catherine would not be his comtesse. The injustice of it left her breathless.

It was her fifth visit to her new betrothed since Athos had lost his mind and married so far beneath him, and Catherine was far from being reconciled to the situation.

“No need to announce me,” Catherine said to the butler, who gave a stiff bow in response. Now that she was officially betrothed to Thomas (pending a few details still being hammered out) she didn’t need to stand on ceremony, since she was all but married to him, but in fact she had been going in and out of the house as if she was one of the family for years. Although she usually loved all the little formalities that made up noble society, Catherine also loved to show off that she was such a trusted friend that the formalities didn’t apply to her here. 

Catherine entered the library, expecting to find Thomas there. Instead, the lowborn woman Athos had slighted her for was leaning over him as he sat looking up at her, apparently oblivious to the rest of the world. She let out a low chuckle as he pretended to wrap her messy dark braid around her neck like a scarf, leaning back and tilting his head like he was judging the style. Then when she flipped her head so her braid fell back down Athos caught it and playfully used it to draw her even closer to him, winding it about his hand until her lips were inches from his. When Catherine cleared her throat pointedly, both of them jumped. Athos let go of the braid immediately, releasing the woman, and turned to her, slightly shamefaced. “Catherine, my apologies. I didn’t realise anyone was there.”

Several sharp responses leapt to Catherine’s tongue, but they were hardly decorous. “It’s of no matter. I was hoping to see Thomas, but it’s always a pleasure to see you as well, Athos,” she said instead. She gave the woman who had seduced Athos an insincere smile and added, “And you, Anne.”

Anne gave her an equally insincere smile. “It’s been too long, Catherine.”

It irked Catherine that the woman always used her given name. Before her marriage to Athos, she’d been next to no one, and she should retain some automatic respect for her betters despite her advancement. Not for the first time, she found herself examining Anne and wondering at Athos’s stupidity, to prefer this brazen little creature to herself. 

He wasn’t entirely to blame, of course. Catherine could see all too easily how the girl had bewitched him, all unkempt hair and bare shoulders and swaying hips. But most men would have retained enough sense to see what sort of woman she was, and realised that she was not marriage material. Especially considering he was all but betrothed to Catherine, an eminently suitable match.

“I believe Thomas is practising shooting out by the barn,” Athos said.

“Oh, yes,” Catherine said. “He was speaking the other day of teaching me some of the basics.” She had considered long and hard whether to be offended by the suggestion, or to take it as a sign Thomas wished to spend more time with her. Perhaps he was cognisant of the honour of becoming betrothed to a woman who could have – should have – been able to look higher than a second son.

“What a good idea,” Anne said, with what Catherine thought of as gross condescension. “You can get the ability to defend yourself and a shared pastime with your betrothed in one easy lesson.”

Athos smiled. “Perhaps I should teach you to handle a sword, Anne. You could be quite formidable.”

“Well, your instruction is _always_ welcome, but I think I understand the basics of how to hold a blade,” Anne purred, giving him a sly look. “And we hardly seem to have time enough for our current pursuits, without adding more.”

How could he be charmed by this low creature? The de la Fères had a noble line going back centuries. They should be better than this.

“I don’t know, I find the idea of duelling you curiously attractive,” Athos said teasingly, with one of those foolish smiles he lapsed into all too often around Anne. “If you ever wish to challenge me to go body to body on the field of honour -”

“Well, I do have a certain fondness for fields, as you know,” Anne said, smirking up at him. “And going body to body.”

Catherine turned and left the room, stewing. Neither noticed her departure. That woman was so lewd, so disgustingly vulgar. It wasn’t a surprise, given she had no family or status, but for the de la Fère line to be polluted by such a being was beyond belief. Watching proper, reserved Athos abandon all of his dignity and trade insinuations like a bawdy comic was sickening.

“Thomas,” she greeted him, reaching the barn.

Thomas lowered his gun and gave her hand a perfunctory kiss. “Catherine, my dear,” he said, but despite the endearment the warmth in his voice seemed insincere and he was already returning his concentration to the activity instead of her. “I didn’t realise you were coming by today.”

Catherine gave him a stilted smile. “I simply had to take you up on your offer to explain firearms to me.” It wasn’t very ladylike, of course, but her consequence was enough to carry it off as an eccentricity, she supposed. And it would at least make her future husband look at her. Once they were married she might have to talk with him about what a low hobby it was, though. “Athos told me you were out here, and it seemed a perfect time.”

“I am amazed Athos had the presence of mind to remember my location,” Thomas said sourly, his mood making one of its lightning shifts from absent-minded disinterest to bitterness. He took another shot, now not looking at Catherine at all. “He was altogether distracted the last time I saw him.”

“He does seem quite besotted,” Catherine said, trying to sound as though it didn’t matter at all. “I would never have expected it of him, especially not with a woman of her… temperament.”

“It’s a mystery what attracted him,” Thomas said. “Or not a mystery at all, come to think of it, given how she shows off her wares. But you’d think he would have realised what she was after. The transparent way she flatters and strokes at him, pretending adoration… it’s disgusting.”

“Those snide little comments of hers, as well,” Catherine said, giving up on indifference and embracing cattiness. “She’s always so rude, and he misses it completely. Looking down her nose at her betters and thinking that’s cleverness.” 

“Oh, she’s shrewd enough,” Thomas said. “Not as clever or witty as she thinks she is, mind you. Some of the things she says… I’ve never met a woman so impertinent. It’s unbecoming. But Athos just laughs along as if there’s nothing wrong with a girl barely better than a peasant mocking his peers to their faces.”

“Your father seems fond of her, as well,” Catherine noted.

Thomas shrugged petulantly, finally giving her his full attention. “Oh, well, he’s charmed by the idea of grandchildren, and she toadies up to him as well. She saves her true colours for us, it seems.”

In some ways Catherine could be quite insightful – for example, she could see insolence directed at her however well it was hidden – but in others, she missed the obvious, too self-absorbed to really understand people’s feelings if they didn’t either directly relate to her or offend her in some way. If she had been a more insightful person, she might have wondered if Thomas’s dislike was because for once he wasn’t the one being extravagantly praised and adored, was in fact the only one not being treated that way. Instead, she nodded in self-righteous agreement. “She’s not fit to be a de la Fère, that’s for sure.”

“If a woman like that had come after me, I’d have known exactly how to treat her,” Thomas said, his scowl twisting his handsome face into a mask. “And it wouldn’t be chasing her about in meadows giggling like a fool, that’s for sure.”

“Your poor brother never has been as smart as you,” Catherine said with a sniff. She’d always previously considered Athos the more intelligent of the two, but given recent events, she’d clearly been mistaken.

Thomas glanced at her, the ugly scowl starting to fade into a smile that seemed genuinely warm. When Thomas smiled at you like you were the only person in the world, it was nearly impossible to resist smiling in return, and Catherine didn’t try. “Well, enough about the viper. Would you like to learn how to load a pistol?”

After a brief and not very productive lesson, the two of them went inside. She worried that her dress might smell of gunpowder now, but decided her maid could probably get it out. Thomas went to clean and put away the weapons. Catherine found herself drawn to the last place she’d seen Athos, still obsessing about how he could prefer another woman to his ideal partner, worrying away at the question like a dog with a bone. She had practically been raised to be his bride, for God’s sake. Was a flash of skin and a come-hither look all it took to make even the noblest of men lose their sense?

Catherine found Anne still seated in the library, poring through a set of thin, handwritten volumes, but Athos was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d finally recalled that he had duties to perform. Anne was reading so intently that she didn’t notice Catherine until the other woman sat down across from her. The noise of the chair being drawn back seemed to shock Anne, and she reacted strangely, slamming the book shut automatically and jerking upright in one quick move.

“Goodness, what are you looking at?” Catherine said, reaching for one. Anne made no move to try and stop her, but Catherine could see a faint flush steal across her face. It proved to be nothing too embarrassing, however – just the previous comtesse’s household journals. Catherine stared at it, wondering why that would make someone like Anne blush, and then understood. “Ah, the late comtesse’s records,” Catherine said, unable to stop the spiteful smile that crept across her face. “She truly was an incredible lady. It must be quite difficult to take her place.”

Anne glared at Catherine, face still red, and said, “I am not trying to take her place. I was simply -”

“Desperately looking for assistance?” Now that Catherine had spotted a weakness, she had no intention of stopping until she’d wrung every ounce of embarrassment out of the situation. “Oh, don’t look so conscious, Anne. I think we’re all aware you don’t have the kind of upbringing suited to a place like this.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” Anne responded. “After all, I have my _husband_ to help me.”

“Of course, of course. Athos is a very kind man, and I’m sure he would never think less of you for being unable to keep the house as comfortable as most ladies of quality could. He might feel a little humiliated when friends visit, or perhaps even when you attend events together and he is reminded of the gap between you, but I doubt he will ever utter a word of condemnation. He won’t allow you to be embarrassed just because you lack the skills required to be a comtesse, however he feels about it himself.”

“Athos seems satisfied enough with my _skills_ so far,” Anne shot back, her face even redder now.

“I’ve heard men are quite easily satisfied with their brides, in the first few months of marriage, at least,” Catherine said, enjoying seeing her rival’s embarrassment. “But after that, of course, they tend to start looking for more substantive qualities.”

“Oh, I think I can keep him satisfied for _far_ longer than that,” Anne replied, voice poisonously sweet. “And by then, who knows? We could have children aplenty to keep us busy, enough sons to ensure that the title never has to pass from the main line. Will you enjoy being an aunt, do you think?”

“Nearly as much as I’ll enjoy being a mother myself,” Catherine said in the same tone. “I look forward to helping teach my children all the qualities and accomplishments necessary to avoid scorn and ostracism among the nobility, just as my mother taught me. Our mother in law was very accomplished as well, you know. Her embroidery was particularly fine. Do you enjoy embroidery? We should sew together sometime.”

“I’m afraid embroidery is not my specialty,” Anne said, nearly spitting the words. Her initial red flush of humiliation and anger was beginning to fade, turning into the paleness of true rage.

Catherine rejoiced in her discomfort. “Oh? Do you prefer painting? I have quite a light hand, my tutors always said.”

“My tutors always said it was better to learn things that served a practical purpose, instead,” Anne replied.

“Such as foreign languages? The previous comtesse spoke five, I believe,” Catherine said. “I myself only speak four.”

“Then you are not the only one put to shame by the previous comtesse, because I only ever learnt four myself,” Anne said, scoring a victory. “Spanish, Italian, English and some German.”

“And Latin, of course?”

“Of course,” Anne said. “Why, did you include Latin in your count? I suppose I do speak five, then. The comtesse would have been proud.”

“It must have been quite time-consuming, learning all of those,” Catherine said. “Perhaps it’s no wonder you lacked time for important talents like embroidery. But of course, while skills are useful, the most important thing for a woman to possess is _presence_. Servants are always able to sense when the person giving them orders isn’t of the quality they’re accustomed to, and they can be dreadfully rude and disobedient.” She gave a light laugh, feeling her previous peevishness melt away at the look on Anne’s face. “But then, just as class always shows through eventually, so does the lack of it.”

“Am I interrupting something?” Thomas said, entering the room suddenly and taking in their frozen expressions. He flopped into the chair next to Anne instead of the one next to Catherine, and leant towards her as if to look at the pile of books in front of her. Anne, still pale with fury, shifted her chair away from both of them.

“I was just assuring dear Anne that she should never feel humiliated by her lack of knowledge,” Catherine told him, unreasonably annoyed that he had sat beside Anne who he hated instead of beside his betrothed.

“Of course,” Thomas said, giving Anne a charming smile, his mood brightening as he sensed the same weakness Catherine had. “As far as I can see, she’s knowledgeable in every area she might have expected to need in her life. I would never shame her for ignorance on other topics.” 

“What loyal and loving brother would?” Anne said, the faintest hint of sarcasm audible in her tone. “And as your sister, I will try never to shame you for the same… out loud, at least.” 

Thomas raised an eyebrow, reaching out to tug at the same braid Athos had been playing with earlier. Anne scowled and tossed her head so that the braid fell to her back, out of his reach, and shifted her chair back further. “You think me ignorant, Anne?” There was a note of warning, perhaps even of danger, in his voice now. 

“More inexperienced than ignorant, perhaps,” Anne said. “After all, most men would realise it’s impolite to choose not to sit with their betrothed, no matter their affection for their sister.” Just as before, she put an almost imperceptible stress on the word ‘sister’.

“Oh, would they?” Thomas’s tone darkened still further. “I bow to your greater knowledge of correct behaviour.”

“Frankly, Thomas, I can only suppose you lack experience in pleasing a lady,” Anne said, smirk curling her lip. “Or perhaps just lack aptitude. Unless of course your reserve is simply a masculine version of maidenly coyness? As an old married lady, I daresay I’m past all that shyness the two of you must have to contend with, and more able to make my feelings plain.” To punctuate the sharp little speech, she moved her chair back again, so that it was away from the table entirely, as far from them as she could get without hitting the wall.

“I have no doubt in believing you left all shyness behind a long time ago,” Catherine said sharply, not sure she understood all of what they were saying, but entirely sure she didn’t approve of the parts she did understand.

“Well, I daresay shyness would have hindered my _presence_ ,” Anne said. “Speaking of presence, though, I think I shall stop inflicting mine on you. I hardly think you require my chaperonage to avoid falling on each other in a fit of passion.” She gave a little snort, as if the idea of them was absurd, then added as a deliberate afterthought, “…What with all the servants about, that is.”

Catherine saw a scowl threaten to overtake Thomas’s face again, but he managed to smooth it back. “Of course,” he said. “I would never disrespect a lady of Catherine’s calibre that way. That sort of fondling and fawning is the province of the lower classes, after all.”

“If you say so, how can I argue?” Anne asked, and left, keeping to the edges of the room as if proximity to Thomas or Catherine would infect her with some disease.

Thomas kept his gaze fixed on her until she was completely out of sight, but Anne did not turn around or show any sign of awareness, and finally he returned his attention to his irate betrothed.

“You stare at her a lot,” Catherine remarked, without meaning to. It was uncouth to mention it, but his behaviour was also uncouth. “When she’s in the room, you keep your eyes on her.”

Catherine had spent more than a decade thinking of Thomas as the younger brother she would someday have, but she’d never been blind to how pleasing his looks or manners could be. Unfortunately, she also wasn’t blind to his history with women – unlike Athos, Thomas was unlikely to be a faithful husband, not when he could charm pretty village girls by the dozen.

That didn’t bother Catherine unduly. The relationship between a lord and his wife had nothing to do with whatever he chose to do with lesser women, and while she planned for them to have several children, she was aware men often indulged in activities not strictly necessary to that end and not approved of by the church. It hardly mattered to her whose bed he shared so long as he didn’t expect any wanton behaviour from her.

Still, there was a difference between accepting that Thomas would likely take out his urges on the silly peasants who gave themselves away freely, and allowing him to ignore her in favour of the classless coquette who’d stolen away her future. The woman deliberately invited that response with her too-free manners and dress, men were easily distracted and enticed, and she knew Thomas would never act on any foolish, base desire he felt for her, but it was still too much to be borne.

“I do keep my eyes on her,” Thomas admitted. “You should as well. She’s a little witch. It’s nothing like you imagine, Catherine. I’m merely worried for my brother. He pretends to know what he’s gotten into, marrying so far beneath himself, but Athos has never understood that it’s not just about vulgarity of dress or speech or taste, it’s about vulgarity of soul.” He shook his head and reached out for her hand, giving her another of those heartfelt smiles. “But I suppose his loss is my gain, is it not? And I do find your jealousy delightful.”

Again, if Catherine was a more insightful person, it might have occurred to her that Thomas found her jealousy more delightful than he found her.

“Both our gain,” she said with a brittle smile, knowing that response was expected. “We will have to discuss when to cement our union at some point. We could hold it in the winter, perhaps?”

Thomas shrugged, letting go of her hand with unflattering haste. “Oh, there’s no rush, is there? My father has been ill of late, and Athos wants to take a trip to Rouen sometime, and in fact my friend has been suggesting a group of us spend some of the winter in Paris – nothing scandalous, just the sort of thing gentlemen enjoy but ladies don’t, gaming, racing, shooting, and so on. Perhaps in the new year instead?”

“Perhaps,” Catherine said, gritting her teeth and struggling to be patient yet again. Blood of Christ, it wasn’t like he couldn’t marry her and then head off to Paris. She’d be content enough taking over the running of La Fère from Anne and setting the place to rights while he drank too much and visited brothels and had whatever other disgusting adventures he envisaged so happily, provided he endeavoured to be discreet. Why put it off?

Thomas enjoyed the praise and flattery she gave him, and he was probably happy with the safety net her dowry provided, but she supposed the idea of really changing his single lifestyle was difficult to accept. Their marriage might not end his dalliances, but he had to know Catherine well enough to know she would at least object to any scandal, and would do her best to moderate his more expensive or foolish endeavours. Or perhaps it was the idea of taking over the management of the lands that would come with her that put him off. Catherine knew Thomas disliked responsibility almost as much as he disliked lectures and disapproval. Probably he just needed more time to become used to the idea. She was sure he didn’t find her distasteful – how could he? She was an ideal bride for a comte, and if anything, that meant she was lowering herself to accept a man who was never likely to rise that high, barring a sudden accident befalling his brother. 

Thomas gave her that smile again, boyish and handsome, clearly trying to cut off any further discussion. Well, even if she ended up with a husband who gambled and drank and whored too much, at least she would have a handsome one. And more importantly, one with blood every bit as blue as hers. So long as he didn’t make her look a fool, she could survive it.

She gave him a cold smile in return, and let him take her hand once more.


	7. Athos

Athos wasn’t sure he could have survived the weeks preceding his father’s death if not for Anne.

Nicolas’s health declined quickly – one week he was complaining of mild headaches and sleeplessness, the next he was tormented by constant agony and nausea too intense to ignore. He went from pacing the room to being unable to move from his bed seemingly overnight. He changed abruptly from a bluff, hearty fifty-something-year-old to a frail, trembling invalid, his hair becoming wispy, eyes sunken, face set in lines of pain. The physicians were unequivocal and unanimous in their diagnosis – he had weeks, months at most, and they would not be pleasant ones.

Athos had always helped out lightly with his father’s duties, in preparation for the day he would take over all of them. But none of them had expected that day to come so soon. Suddenly he found himself managing all of the little day-to-day problems that his father had always dealt with, managing accounts, settling disputes, discussing business deals. That would have been enough of an adjustment, but it seemed like additional issues kept piling up as well. Athos found physicians for his father; he settled debts Thomas had accrued when visiting Paris the year before; he dealt with the aftermath of a small fire in Pinon that destroyed several family’s stores; he finalised the terms of the betrothal agreement with the de Garouvilles. But problems kept coming and it was his responsibility to solve them.

If it weren’t for Anne, he would have been completely stressed and overwhelmed. But she was always there, helping in little ways, listening to his worries and soothing his fears. However busy he was, he always managed to take a couple of breaks throughout the day to spend time with her, finding her touch more rejuvenating than food or sleep. And the high point of every day was curling around her at night.

Anne seemed stressed as well. Although she tried to hide this from him, too proud to admit it, Athos wasn’t a fool. He could see that trying to run the house was taking its toll on her. He had a few quiet words with the housekeeper, making it very clear that every servant in the house should treat his wife with absolute respect, because if he so much as heard of one talking in a rude tone to her they would be fired without question. After that, he kept a close eye on the servants, and was pleased to see they obeyed Anne’s orders as promptly and respectfully as his own. That seemed to ease some of the pressure, but he still found Anne bent over his mother’s journals with an intense expression more nights than not. One night when he came into the room she looked up from one with a fierce scowl.

“I can’t embroider,” she threw the words at him like someone throwing down a gauntlet.

He blinked at her, surprised. “Nor can I.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then her mouth twisted into an unwilling smile. He followed suit. “Well, just so long as we’re clear on that,” she said finally. “I don’t know much about cooking, either.”

“It’s a good thing we have a cook, then,” he said.

“Hmm. I’m still supposed to agree the menu for each week, though, and I’ve never heard of half these herbs and spices. It’s a good thing your mother kept such thorough records, otherwise everything we ate would be garlic flavoured.”

“I’m grateful to you for helping the household run smoother,” he told her honestly, “But if it upsets you, you don’t need to do it. You do more than enough as it is. And I like garlic.” 

“It doesn’t upset me, exactly. I can handle it,” Anne said, with characteristic stubbornness. “I haven’t managed to burn the place to the ground yet, or caused the servants to flee and seek other employment, despite my best efforts. That’s a good sign. A little garlic is nothing in comparison.”

Athos loved her more for her determination to help. Their honeymoon period of idleness and lovemaking had abruptly disappeared, replaced by strenuous work, long days, a miserable house, harassed servants and a sick and irascible patriarch. Most women would have been furious, or at least despondent. His Anne stuck her chin out, managed things, and made quips. Not for the first time, he thought that people who looked at Anne and only saw her beauty and sweetness were missing the substance of her. 

“And as for me doing more than enough, rubbish. I’m not doing half as much as you,” she continued, eyes blazing. “You’re working yourself into the ground. I don’t know how you do it.”

“I couldn’t do it without you,” he said. “I mean that, Anne. I rely on your counsel for every dispute I settle or deal I make, you are the only thing I look forward to every day, and you have done more to keep my father comfortable than the rest of the house together.”

This was true, surprisingly. It was understandable that Nicolas would want his favourite son by his bedside, and for much of the day, he did. Thomas devoted hours every day to sitting beside Nicolas, delivering a constant stream of jokes and tall tales, and Athos was grateful for it. Sometimes Athos wished he could spend more time with his father before the end instead of running around taking care of everything else, but if only one of his sons could be there, it was best it was Nicolas’s favourite. Nicolas and Athos had always loved each other, but they also frustrated each other, and Athos thought that was the last thing Nicolas needed in his present state.

But Thomas wasn’t at his best in a sickroom, and after a few hours his patience with sitting beside his dying father would generally wane. He would take a horse and go out riding, find some birds to shoot at, call on Catherine, or even visit friends nearby. Sometimes this angered Athos, but he didn’t have the heart to admonish him. He knew it must be a terrible burden for Thomas to watch their father writhe in agony, to know that they would soon lose their last remaining parent. If Athos’s own grief sometimes felt overwhelming, he knew Thomas’s must be worse.

From the first, though, Nicolas objected to being left alone with any combination of the two doctors hired to consult and the three maids and valet in constant attendance on his sickroom. He wanted family around him. With Athos trying to manage the village and the estate and Thomas unwilling to stay there for activities like bloodletting, this left the newest member of the family to keep him company. At first, Anne was unwilling to do this, but one look at the dark bags under her husband’s eyes convinced her it was necessary. She started to do the household accounts in the sickroom, instructed the housekeeper to find her there for orders, and rarely left except when Nicolas slept. Luckily, thanks to all the drugs he was on now, this was often, allowing her to return to the room she shared with Athos and muster her energy for another day of dealing with the world’s worst patient. She proved surprisingly skilful at helping the physicians make up whatever medications they prescribed, somehow persuaded Nicolas to drink teas that seemed to help him sleep, flattered and cajoled Nicolas out of his pain-induced tantrums, and gradually made herself indispensable to the dying man’s comfort.

The strain on all of them was terrible. Nicolas complained loudly about anything and everything when he was lucid enough, Athos offended several of the villagers with his lack of tact, Thomas exploded a few times at the doctors and once at Athos, Anne was unnecessarily sharp with the housekeeper and maids, and Athos suspected that Thomas and Anne had quarrelled at some point as well. They seemed stiff and awkward with each other, but when he asked them about it, both insisted they were the best of friends and it was only that they were tired. He let it go, deciding he must be imagining it. Even if he wasn’t, they were clearly determined to sort it out themselves, and he didn’t have the energy to force the issue.

Athos and Anne did not fight, not really, no matter how tired and snappish they got. Once or twice they seemed on the verge of it, exhaustion making their usual banter slide into real barbs, but then one of them would step forward and kiss the other and all the exhaustion would melt away. Athos thought that was the only thing that kept those weeks from being unendurable – when he was with Anne, touching her, kissing her, none of the stress of the day seemed to matter anymore. All of his burdens lightened. Once their skin touched, there was only the two of them, enfolded in a little warm space of love and desire.

After all of it, Nicolas’s death was almost an anticlimax. It was also, Athos thought, extremely uncharacteristic of his father. Nicolas quietly worsened one evening, quietly died that night, and was just as quietly interred in the family vault the following day.

The next few days were a flurry of activity – reassuring the servants and Pinon that nothing would change, meeting with attorneys to be officially given control of the estate, handling his father’s personal bequests, sending letters to all of his father’s friends and associates. And then, suddenly, surprisingly, there was next to nothing to do. The torrent of tasks that had seemed so overwhelming while his father was ill slowed. The physicians were paid and sent away, the house began to function as it had before, the village relaxed, and Thomas went to spend a month at a friend’s estate.

It was just him and Anne – well, and twenty odd servants, and a village, and a decent-sized house, and a stable of horses. But it felt like just them.

“How do you feel?’ Anne said softly one morning, lying beside him in bed after they finished waking each other up thoroughly. She placed her hand over his, stroking the back of it with her thumb lightly.

He’d been enjoying the afterglow, absorbed in pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses onto her neck and lips and stroking the underside of her breast lightly through the thin nightgown he hadn’t ripped off for once, and it took him a moment to register her words. She threaded her fingers through his hair, making him look at her as he thought.

“Relieved,” he said, not bothering to prevaricate. “What kind of man feels relieved that his father is dead?”

“He was sick and in pain. It hardly makes you a terrible person to want him free of that. You loved him.”

Athos sighed. “I just can’t help worrying about it. I always resented him, you know. I hated how he expected so much of me simply because I was his heir. I was angry that he liked Thomas better than me.”

“I don’t think he liked Thomas better than you,” Anne said. She frowned, trying to explain, trying to find the right words. “I just think they had more in common. You have a… constancy, I suppose, that neither of them shared.”

“How do you mean?” He reached up to smooth a strand of hair out of her face.

“Oh, both of their emotions change so very quickly,” Anne said. “It was like your father could switch between anger and amusement and confusion within moments. For the most part, Thomas is the same. And they’re both so easily bored – even sick, your father was hard to entertain, and Thomas found it impossible to sit there at his bedside for long. But you can spend hours practicing sword drills or reading a book, and I don’t think your father could understand that.”

“I know he couldn’t understand why I didn’t love socialising like he and Thomas do,” Athos said ruefully. “They both crave – craved – new people, games, events, places. My father got better as he got older, but when we were young he barely spent half his time at the estate. He was always riding off to visit friends or spend time in the city, just like Thomas does now. It doesn’t bother me to live quietly at home. I like the quiet. I like the solitude.” 

Anne raised an eyebrow at him. “Solitude? You mean you would prefer to be alone?” She moved closer so that her body pressed against his, dragging one bare foot slowly up the back of his calf. Her nightgown was pulled up so far from their earlier activities that he could feel her bare thigh brush up against his and caught his breath. “Should I leave you to your own company, m’sieur?”

“Never,” Athos said, breathing in the scent of her and hooking his arm around her to draw her closer still, thumb slowly stroking the back of her neck. She shivered against him and he smiled. “I just mean I feel no desire to listen to fools gossip away about fashion and love affairs when I could be curled up here with my lovely wife. I never really enjoyed all that chatter.”

“Well, you seem very talkative to _me_ ,” Anne said lazily, pressing a kiss to his neck, hands sliding down his body. “Even when there are many other things you could be doing.” 

“I do owe my father a debt for his social nature, though,” Athos said, marvelling at how lucky he was. “If he hadn’t been so outgoing, he would never have become a regular attendee of very dull hunting parties, and I would never have been sent in his stead to one.”

Now Anne gave a gasp of mock offense that made his smile widen. “Dull? I’ll show you dull,” she said threateningly, pushing at him to roll over and then straddling him, and he realised with a jolt that her nightgown was rucked up even higher than he’d supposed as he felt the heat of her core rub teasingly against him. “Nothing I attend is _ever_ dull.”

“Prove it,” Athos said, and arched up to kiss her, falling into her the way he always did.

In general, they fell back into the simple, pure happiness they had enjoyed before his father’s illness worsened so dramatically. The only difference was that now Athos was the Comte de la Fère, and Anne was the Comtesse de la Fère, and if either of them expected that to have a significant impact on their day-to-day lives they were mistaken.

Anne had already taken over the running of the household, and now she settled into it completely, easily commanding the servants and seeing to everything, confident and assured. Her touch was visible everywhere – for one thing, fresh flowers bloomed in every room. Athos, meanwhile, got used to riding out to Pinon regularly to check there were no issues that required his attention and to keep his finger on the pulse of the town.

Often he would take Anne with him. It wasn’t entirely the done thing – the only times his mother had ever gone to Pinon was when his father was away and she had to sort out a dispute on his behalf – but Anne seemed to love the little village. They would wander about, watching Remi do his work at the smithy, greeting villagers by name, even sometimes stopping by the inn for a quick drink or bite to eat. Winter was well underway, now, and the air was starting to take on a chill, so it was more pleasant to be indoors near the fire than to roam the fields as they had in summer.

The innkeeper, Bertrand, always seemed touchingly pleased to see them. Athos couldn’t imagine why the man was so fond of his lords, but he always refused payment for whatever they ate or drank and he served them the best he had. Athos had to slip coins to the man’s daughter, Jeanne, who was rather more practical than her father.

Watching Jeanne interact with her father sometimes made Athos feel the grief of his own loss more acutely. He may not always have got along with Nicolas, but he had loved him.

“What was your father like?” he asked Anne. “You never speak of him.”

She shrugged. “I was very young when he died. I don’t really recall him, to be honest.”

“Did your mother not talk about him?”

“She said he was a very generous man,” Anne said, lips quirked as if at a private joke. “I don’t know if I take after him, really, but I certainly didn’t get my hair from my mother, so at least he gave me something.”

“And your mother?” he persisted, watching her closely, ready to stop questioning her at any sign of pain.

Anne tried to shrug this off as well, but she looked almost irritated for a moment before her face smoothed out. “She was lovely. I mean, I think everyone remembers their mother as beautiful, but she really was.”

“Like you.”

“Oh, nothing like me,” Anne tilted her head to the side, regarding him through half-closed eyes. “She was always so _accepting_. Things would happen and she’d just sigh, pray, and deal with whatever it was. She’d never fight back, or try and change things. She never even bothered to rage against the heavens. She just made her peace with everything and endured it. I used to find that very aggravating.”

“Beautiful, serene and compliant,” Athos remarked. “She sounds like some Biblical figure.”

“Hmm, perhaps.” Again, Anne looked quietly amused, though he wasn’t sure why. “In any case, she was always good to me, although I think her life would have been easier without me. She used to tell me how proud she was of my spirit, though, how amazed she was that I was so fierce when she was so quiet.”

“My mother was quiet as well,” Athos said. “Reserved, I suppose.”

“So that’s where you get it from.”

“I haven’t been at all reserved since I met you,” he objected, taking a sip of his drink.

“What was she like besides that?”

“Very dignified, lady-like, correct,” he paused, considering it. “Sometimes it seemed like she was so reserved, that was all we knew, really. I suppose she must have been witty, my father believed she was at least, but I don’t think I ever really saw her as herself, if that makes any sense.” He smiled down at her, eyes soft with affection. “I loved her, but she was distant. We’ll be different with our children, won’t we?”

“Yes,” she said, a bit uncertainly. Then, as he watched, she straightened and gave him that smile of hers that always made him weak, and said with much more conviction, “Yes. Yes, we will.”


	8. Anne

It was infuriating, Anne thought, how weak she’d become. The deadline she’d given herself to get out was fast approaching, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d known that for some time now. She’d watched Athos grieve and thought she’d rather cut off one of her own limbs than see him in pain, and that had been when she knew how much trouble she was really in. Before then she’d thought lust, she’d thought infatuation, she’d even thought fondness, but she’d never for one second allowed herself to think love.

But what else could it be, when you wanted someone else’s happiness more than your own? She’d never once thought of someone before herself, it had always been a point of pride that her only aim was her own survival, but Athos was Athos and she would die for him without hesitation. Anne knew she would be Anne de Breuil forever, if Anne de Breuil made him happy. There wasn’t much she needed to lie about to make that happen, just her family, her past and a few of her less savoury skills. Her sense of humour, interests, emotions, and everything else – that was all genuine. Especially her love for her husband. There was no harm in concealing a few small things that would never affect him or their relationship.

Athos was in Pinon, but she’d demurred when he asked her if she wanted to come, claiming she had a few things to sort out at the house. Then she’d left a note saying she’d gone for a walk to prevent panic and snuck out without being spotted by any of the servants. Athos would probably reproach her for it later, saying she should have taken someone for protection, even just to go to the stream. After all, a fragile flower like Anne de Breuil shouldn’t be wandering about the place alone. Still, she hardly needed an audience for this.

Last week, she had buried her knives as far from the house as possible. It was a miracle she’d managed to keep them hidden from the maids as long as she had. Today, she pulled out the little container of drugs and emptied them one by one into the stream. She’d already emptied some of them out into the garderobe when she first came to the house, refilling the pots with perfumes and face paint and so on, so that if anyone saw it they would think all the potions were things like that. The rest she had kept because it made her uneasy to let them go, especially with Thomas around.

The first one she emptied into the water was the container with the few scattered dried leaves that was all that remained of the rue she took daily to prevent children. The next was the pennyroyal, which she’d only had to resort to a few times in previous years, and which had left her sick and nauseous for weeks every time – it was a poison, after all. She had always disliked the taste of rue even when she steeped it, and just thinking of the times she’d used pennyroyal made her stomach want to revolt, but it still felt bizarre to get rid of them. Without them, she might become with child. Might bear a child. Athos’s child.

She had considered having children in the past, of course, once or twice. Some men would pay a fortune to avoid the guilt and scandal of a by-blow. Just like with marriage, though, she’d never been able to bring herself to go through with it. Children changed the body. If you chose to keep them around, they changed more than that.

When she married Athos she had kept taking the rue because she knew she might need to run. She suspected fleeing quickly while pregnant would be more difficult, but that wasn’t the only consideration. If she had run with bags full of jewellery and other valuables, Athos would have been furious, broken-hearted, shocked, even destroyed, but at the beginning, Anne had considered it unlikely he would do more than set the law on her. But even then she’d known that if she disappeared carrying his child, she would spent the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for him. 

Now, of course, the point was moot. She couldn’t leave because it would break Athos’s heart, because it would break her own heart, and if she wasn’t going to leave than it was foolish to spend her life poised to flee. She could give in to it, let herself admit she loved him, continue to settle into being comtesse, have children, live happily ever after. No more fear, no more flight. She could finally relax.

Well, for the most part. Thomas was due back in three days. Athos had read the letter out loud to her that morning when he received it. She had forced herself to return his smile, employing all her acting skills to convince him that she was as eager for his brother’s return as he was. And not just Thomas’s return, because with him back in the house, Catherine would resume her visits.

It was unpleasant, the way they looked at her, the way they spoke to her. Perhaps she deserved worse, considering all her lies, but that didn’t excuse them. Catherine’s dislike she could recognise and for the most part dismiss as jealousy and arrogance. Thomas, on the other hand, was unpredictable, and that made her constantly on edge around him. He would insult her subtly, compliment her outrageously, act like her presence sickened him, touch her in an over-affectionate way, laugh at her jokes, and scoff at her opinions, all within the same five-minute window. He seemed to resent her and admire her in equal measure, and both emotions made her skin crawl.

She wondered how much of that was in her head, though. Like his father, Thomas was devoted to the de la Fères, almost worshipping his own family line, their nobility, their wealth, their history. Despite the unnerving attraction to her he showed at times, Anne knew he considered her far beneath him, and consequently, far beneath Athos as well. And that was just because he knew she wasn’t nobility. If he knew she was not only not noble, but not genteel, not even respectable, was in fact the opposite of respectable… it didn’t bear thinking of.

Given his contempt for the comparatively conservative villagers of Pinon, she could only imagine what he would think of someone like her. Thomas barely seemed to view the villagers as the same species as him, believing that their humble lineage made them no better than beasts of burden. Whereas Anne had no lineage at all. The only family member she knew the name of was her mother, who had lived nearly all her life in a brothel, and Anne’s own past was as colourful and sordid as the dresses the women there had worn. 

He made her uncomfortable, but worse than that was the fear she felt sometimes in his presence. The greater part of her fear had nothing to do with Thomas or his view of her, though, not really, since she didn’t give a damn how common he thought she was. Instead, she feared what his contempt for her represented. Thomas acted as a daily reminder of how Athos would look at her, if he knew who she truly was, if he knew that she had lied to him. They weren’t very similar in appearance, but Thomas did have a few of Athos’s mannerisms, and it was frightening to imagine that expression of disdain and disgust on a face she’d only seen lit by affection and love for her. It was the same with Catherine – she didn’t fear Catherine in the same way she did Thomas, but she hated her with a surprising viciousness, because Catherine was a reminder of the sort of wife Athos should have had. Neither of them were real threats to her, just annoyances, and in most verbal battles Anne found it easy to leave them fuming and humiliated, but their connection to Athos and to her own guilt and fear about deceiving him meant that their presence ruined her serenity and left her feeling small and hunted.

If she had to share a house with them to stay here, though, that was a price she’d pay a hundred times over. This morning she had been woken by a kiss from the man she loved, and she’d been in a comfortable bed, in a sunlit room. Right now she was wearing a beautiful dress that a maid had helped her into, later she could eat delicious food until she was full, and then after that she could pull the aforementioned love back to the bed they shared and spend the rest of the day in the most pleasurable way imaginable. A way that might give Athos the child he wanted. This was a life Anne never could have imagined, not back when she curled up in a dark, smelly corner in a brothel to sleep, or when her knees were bruised and bleeding from forced prayer in a cold convent, or when her belly contracted with hunger pains and her face stung from Sarazin’s slap after another failed job. She was in a different world, here, one full of sunlight and comfort and love, and she would not go back. Not for anything.

Certainly not out of fear of Thomas and Catherine.

Thomas returned just when he said he would, which surprised Athos, and dragging with him a few friends to stay a while, which did not surprise Athos.

“He often does this,” he told Anne with a hint of exasperation. The next moment he smiled and forgave his brother everything, though, as he always did, saying, “I suppose we have been cloistering ourselves away for some time, though, and a little company might do us good.”

“I assure you, _nothing_ we’ve been doing is done in a cloister, Athos,” Anne said, and then for accuracy’s sake amended it to, “Well, it’s not supposed to be, anyway.” Her experiences in the convent might not be representative, of course, since several of the nuns had insisted she brought sin wherever she went.

Thomas’s three friends were largely harmless and quite charming, to Anne’s surprise. They flirted with her in a cheerful, carefree way but immediately stopped when Athos raised an eyebrow at one of them, told scandalous stories but cut themselves off and apologised whenever they worried they’d crossed a line, and played silly, tipsy games but never graduated to causing actual damage or harm to anyone around them. They were useless, in the way of rich, uncaring nobles, but also inoffensive.

One of them was Italian, and he spoke French well, but not perfectly.

“Anne speaks Italian, I believe,” Thomas said carelessly to him the first night, leaning back and resting his feet on the small card table the other two were trying to play on.

“Hey,” one objected, shoving Thomas’s feet to the floor with a thump.

“Yes?” The Italian – Mancini – looked at Anne eagerly. “It is too long since I’ve had the chance. French is alright, but Italian, well, it makes so much more sense.” He launched eagerly into a description of how much better his native language was than French, completely in Italian, slowing himself down a little out of sympathy to her confused look as she tried to switch her brain to the new language.

“You can’t expect me to agree,” Anne said finally, also in Italian. Low-level brothels tended to have a lot of women from other countries – no one wanted to hire foreigners, after all, so they often fell into less respectable jobs. She had decent fluency in all the languages she’d claimed, excepting Latin, which she could bluff through mainly because of her years in the convent and her knowledge of so many related tongues. Luckily, few people expected you to speak Latin outside of a church. “I’m French, after all. I’m required to think French is poetry.”

Mancini grinned and continued to speak in Italian to her for the rest of his stay. Athos simply laughed, pride in his wife’s intelligence in every line of his expression, and told Anne that he found her speaking quick Italian very distracting – perhaps she could speak more of her many languages to him in a private locale, sometime? She whispered endearments into his ear at the first opportunity.

It was only at the very end of their stay that one of the others said to Mancini, “You smile every time she speaks, you know, like you’re holding back laughter. Is she so amusing? Are we all missing the joke?”

“The pleasure of speaking my mother tongue with a beautiful lady,” Mancini said in French, just a little too quickly and self-consciously. It caught Thomas’s attention.

“Really?” Thomas said, studying Mancini. He laughed. “No, I think it’s more. You’ll have to tell us now.”

Mancini flushed, and cast Anne a glance of apology. “It is no shame, my lady, especially not when you are so fluent. But your accent, well!”

“I can deal with the criticism,” Anne said, unbothered. “It’s been years since I spoke Italian, I must have forgot some of the pronunciation.” To tell the truth, she was surprised it had stuck with her so long. She’d always been best at English, thanks to Clarik and the English lady she’d followed like a shadow in the convent, and Italian was so rarely useful.

“No, no, you speak the words correctly, it is just – well, your tutor perhaps learnt from someone not very respectable?” Mancini waved his hands about, trying to illustrate his point with extravagant gestures. “It is like my older brother when he imitates the groom, you know. A low accent, I suppose is the term, though of course, coming from your lips it is charming regardless. You transform it to something quite delightful.”

Thomas snorted. Anne flushed, but the embarrassment was not at her low accent, instead at her own stupidity. For some reason it hadn’t even crossed her mind that languages other than French would have a very different way of speaking for the rich and the poor. It had taken her years to lose all traces of her own low accent to pass as a lady, so it should have. Anne thought she would have to be careful about using her other languages in future – perhaps not English, since she’d matched her way of speech to Lady Edith, who had been very respectable, but the rest of them might sound like the speech of street people to anyone native. Athos, Thomas and Catherine all spoke a few languages, but she didn’t think any of them would be able to tell if her way of speaking lacked class. It was likely she could play off any quirks they noticed as due to regional differences between their tutors, and it wasn’t as if there would be many reasons to speak in other languages. Damn her stupidity in showing off, though. She should have pretended to know only French and English.

“I am very sorry,” Mancini said, horrified. “I did not mean – oh, dear – my lady, I must -”

“It’s alright,” Anne said, forcing the blush back and giving a careless wave of her hand. Thomas’s eyes were still fixed on her face, though she couldn’t tell if he was enjoying her discomfort. Sometimes he seemed to glory in it, but other times he rushed to reassure her, smothering her with slimy words and touches that were supposed to be comforting.

Mancini and the others left later that day, with plenty of extravagant compliments and flowery expressions of gratitude for their hostess, and a promise to bring back some bottles when they next visited to reverse the effect of their depredation on the Comte’s wine cellar.

“Just the three of us again,” Athos said, transparent in his contentment, leaning back in his chair. Thomas was out saying a final goodbye to his friends, and Anne had taken the opportunity of time alone with Athos while everyone else was dealing with farewells.

“Just the two of us right now,” Anne said, closing the door to the library and giving him her most seductive smirk. He tipped his head back to look up at her, adoring gaze intensifying to something more primitive as she tugged her laces loose and slipped her white dress off to land on the floor, and then she crawled into his lap and he reached out to touch her, an appreciative noise escaping him.

She moved against him, seeking pleasure but also seeking reassurance. They were husband and wife, they were in love, they were _them_ : nothing could change that, nothing could mar it. Occasionally having to share their home with unpleasant people like Thomas and Catherine was just an irritation – it would never come between them, not when they were so happy and so strong and so in love. This was at the core of that love, the reverence in his touch, the wonder in hers, the growing heat that turned them both urgent and mindless. The need for comfort was quickly replaced by the desire that flooded her system whenever he touched her, the warmth of him overtaking everything, every shred of distrust and paranoia that a harsh life had gifted her with swept away by the joy he gave her. Wealth and comfort was all very well, but if she had none of that, she would still have Athos, and Athos was all that mattered.

Anne didn’t know what made her open her eyes as she lay curled in his arms in the afterglow, but when she did, Thomas was there at the doorway, eyes intent on her face. Her stomach dropped sickeningly and she felt her skin suddenly go cold. She wondered how long he’d been standing there, watching them. Somehow she knew that he hadn’t just opened the door. Somehow she knew he’d been there for a while, listening to every gasp and moan, watching every arch and shudder of her body. 

Athos dropped another kiss onto her collarbone, oblivious to his brother standing behind him, oblivious to the lewd way Thomas’s eyes were tracing her body. Athos’s body blocked most of his sightline but he could still see far more of her bare skin than was appropriate. There was something dark in his expression, something sick – desire and hatred and envy and scorn all mingling to a horrifying cocktail. Anne opened her mouth, trying to choke out something to Athos, some noise of warning or alarm, but her throat was dry. Thomas grinned at her – that boyish, charming grin he used to such great effect on everyone but her, but twisted and wrong – and disappeared, the door swinging shut softly behind him.

She slumped against Athos, any hint of desire or contentment gone. Perhaps she did fear Thomas, after all.


	9. Thomas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: ye olde rape culture, droit de seigneur-ish views, stalking, Thomas being a creepy fucker, unreliable narration.

Thomas despised Anne de Breuil. He despised her arrogance, her low sense of humour, her condescension, her skimpy clothing. He despised the way she used his brother, petting him constantly, pretending devotion that he knew she didn’t feel. Most of all, he despised her lies.

What else could it be but a lie when she acted so indifferent to him? Not just indifferent, even, but utterly dismissive. She slighted him casually and often, wrapping the insults up as jests and teases so his brother didn’t recognise them, making it clear over and over again that she thought him small, displeasing, arrogant and even odious. No one thought Thomas was odious. He was attractive, charismatic, compelling, and clever, with just the right degree of humble self-deprecation in his wit – when Thomas joked that he must be boring someone, they would always assure him he could never do so, that he was charm itself, and he would laugh with them because he knew they were right.

When he joked to Anne that he might be boring her, she would smirk – with a hint of slyness, with a hint of derision – and say she forgave him for it, but that he must remember next time that his own achievements were not as fascinating a topic for others. When he tried to laugh with her, she would give him a small, absent smile that he recognised as the sop for his pride it obviously was, and sometimes adopt a confused look as though she couldn’t understand his amusement. When he kissed her on the cheek or took her arm, she shrank from him as subtly as she could, moved away as soon as she could, as if his touch disgusted her. He had been nothing but charming and kind to her, for the most part, but she behaved as if he was repellent. He didn’t deserve such treatment, especially not from someone like her.

He knew it was all a pretence, of course, simply the other side of the pretence she showed his brother. He knew that beneath her assumed coolness, she wanted him, wanted him enough she must be ashamed of it, enough that she feared to show it. He could see it in the jump of her pulse when he lingered too close, the sway of her hips when she walked away from him, the fire in her green eyes when she taunted him. The base little witch was trying to hide her own coarseness, desperate to appear pure and untainted for her husband, terrified that Thomas would cause her to reveal what she was. So she rubbed herself all over Athos to try and prove her non-existent devotion to him and said her nasty little asides to Thomas to try and prove she didn’t want him the way he knew she did.

He would not act on it, of course. Thomas d’Athos was honourable and noble, and he’d never dream of touching his brother’s wife, no matter how much the bitch might want it. She might not be of their sphere but marriage to Athos had made her a lady, of a kind, and if she wasn’t due the kind of respect Catherine was she was still due some. She wasn’t a villager, to be tumbled in a barn or taken against a tree, no matter how much she might act the wanton in her attempts to beguile Athos and keep him foolish and lovesick. Thomas might be angered by her show of arrogance and contempt, by her impertinent attempts to convince him she found him worthless, but their arguments were a war of words and he would never betray his own ideals by going too far with the Comtesse de la Fère.

It was difficult to stop watching her, though, especially when he saw how it affected her. She was stunning – Thomas could understand why Athos had allowed himself to be bewitched by her, although he’d privately considered his straitlaced brother to have the lustful inclinations of a statue before now. Anne’s figure was perfect, her skin flawless, and the way she moved would give any man ideas. Thomas found it hard not to stare at her. He resented that. He knew she was deliberately enticing him, despite all her overcompensation – she wanted his attention on her, craved it even. He obliged.

Sometimes she would try not to respond, her expression icy and unconcerned, desperate not to let on how he was affecting her. Sometimes she would pretend to be annoyed, angry, offended, but since she would always paste back on her smile when Athos was around and Thomas saw through her facade he didn’t know why she bothered. Other times he saw fear in her eyes, an almost child-like terror, however she tried to hide it. It gave him a thrill every time he saw it. It reminded him of the way peasant girls playing hard to get sometimes stared at him when he called them on their act – wide-eyed and defenceless, looking up at him and trembling, ready to be conquered by his superior force, finally submitting. Women liked a man to master them, after all, and the lower in class they were the more they wanted it, their own minds too weak and changeable to manage themselves. A woman like Catherine was satisfied with a husband who would set a few boundaries, but lesser women like Anne required a firm hand, and peasant girls desperately wanted to be completely overwhelmed by their masters. It was just how they were. Athos was simply too naive to understand that no woman could really respect or want a devoted slave of a man.

Anne’s comments, though – they infuriated him. Her insults to him, the way she treated him as lesser, as worthy of her contempt. They might be a cover, but they were still unjustifiable. How dare she talk down to him and mock him, as if he were nothing, as if he were not a de la Fère? Her comments to Athos were even worse – low, teasing quips and come-ons, obviously deliberately intended to inflame Thomas as well, to provoke him to madness knowing all the things she was sharing with Athos that Thomas could not in good conscience take. A lesser man would take them and damn her for her Jezebel-like behaviour – she was lucky Thomas was above that.

But he dreamt of her, often, dreams where she was bare before him, dreams where he finally forced her to pay for every little jibe and taunt and temptation. It was hard to think of anything but her, he spent as much of every day as he could in her company, infuriated and stirred by her actions. The time away had done nothing at all to ease his obsession, he still wanted to be around her, to provoke her, to imagine how he would take her. Even when she tried to avoid him in their big house he would find her.

She hid behind Athos as much as possible, still defending herself with her sham of fidelity. Thomas heard them together sometimes, saw little flashes of their couplings at other times, and imagined himself in his brother’s place until he ached with envy and desire.

“The two of you seem as happy as the day you brought her back here,” Thomas commented to his brother, taking care to keep his voice light and friendly, no hint of his bitterness showing.

“Happier,” Athos said, grinning.

“No moving,” Anne said in her strictest manner, but her eyes danced too much for either of them to take it seriously. She was trying her hand at painting, after yet another pointed comment from Catherine, and she had insisted her first subject be her husband. As a result, Athos tried not to move much as he did the accounts, but neither of them seemed able to resist giving each other foolish glances and grins as they worked.

She put on a good show, seeming just as infatuated as his foolish brother, but Thomas could see through it. He was sure he could.

Athos looked out the window, then shook his head and looked back. “I’m glad winter’s finally ending,” he said. “I miss the outside world. I miss being able to go out into the meadows without wearing five layers and shivering.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Anne said, smirking at him. “But you still need to stay still or you’ll end up looking like a loaf of bread instead of a person. No looking out of windows longingly. If you must stare at something longingly, make it your wife.”

“The painting is going well, then?” Thomas said, and went to go look over her shoulder. He noticed with pleasure how she tensed, gripping the brush tighter, in response to his closeness. He moved a few strands of her hair so that they rested behind her shoulder, pretending they had been blocking him from seeing it clearly, and she stopped breathing for a moment. “Oh, my God. No, it isn’t.”

“Show me,” Athos demanded, and Anne sheepishly held up the portrait, which resembled nothing and no one. After a second, Athos raised an eyebrow, lip curling in amusement. “I think you’ve captured my soul, Anne.”

“Oh, have I? Wait and see what I add next,” Anne said, faking offense. “I’ll teach you to mock my efforts. Would you prefer I paint your eyes red with drink, or add some yellow to your teeth, or some other touch?”

“I never mock your efforts,” Athos reassured her, with a glint in his eye.

“And yet I sense mockery,” Anne said with a put-upon sigh. “That’s it, there’s nothing for it, I’ll have to add a cloud of green to represent your morning breath in revenge. You can pretend it’s your inner strength, if you’d like.”

“A great revenge indeed,” Thomas assured her, giving her his best smile. “You could paint me instead, if you like. I’d be glad to sit for you.” A look of disgust flickered across her face, too fast for her husband to see it, and Thomas felt a flash of anger in response. Otherwise, she ignored him completely, returning all of her attention to her husband.

“I’m not mocking!” Athos protested. “I just believe you’re painting my inner self, not the earthly body I’m trapped in. That would certainly explain the purple.”

“It looked like black before I added water,” Anne said, turning the painting back her way and tilting her head to study it, still ignoring Thomas, despite his proximity. “And just why do you think the depths of your soul would be purple?”

“What other colour could it be?”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Anne nodded gravely. “And the depths of my soul? Be very careful how you answer.”

“I can try and paint it beside my own, to represent our union,” Athos offered, and moved to be beside her, forcing Thomas to move away. Athos sat down on the little settee with her, ignoring that it didn’t have enough room for two people, and Anne just laughed and threw her legs over his lap so they were sitting on each other more than the settee. Thomas burnt with jealousy but forced himself to walk back to the fire, staring into it blindly.

“Oh, no, that’s too bad! Give me back the brush! My soul is not _black_!”

Thomas turned to watch them again, giggling like children, fighting over the paintbrush. Inevitably, a dollop landed on Anne’s arm after a few minutes, and she scooped it up and drew a line down Athos’s face. “There, _now_ I’ve painted you.”

“Hmm, I suppose that counts. But I’m hardly the work of art, here.”

Thomas agreed with Catherine, they were sickening. He didn’t know how he could bear to be around them, but he could never stay away long, either. There was something addictive about watching Anne’s face when he stood too close to her, when he touched her. She was like a hound standing trembling before a wild boar, hackles raised, trying desperately to pretend it wasn’t afraid. In comparison, peasant girls were rabbits, not even able to pretend they were unafraid, hearts giving out immediately. He loved seeing Anne’s fear, seeing how she tried to repress it, and how she failed. She was more conscious of him now than she had been before his father died, more aware of her own vulnerability.

“I should get a real painter here,” Athos said, as Anne returned her brush to the ruined canvas, painting in big aggressive swirls. “The one who painted Thomas and I when he came of age, perhaps. That way we can add your portrait to the wall as well.”

“I don’t know if I could sit still for that long,” Anne said, giving her husband a smirk. “You’d have to make it worth my while.”

“Mmm, I’m sure I could think of something,” Athos replied. “For the moment, however, we have a more important priority.”

“Yes?”

“Some paints can be toxic,” Athos said, trying to look concerned. “I’m heard that. We shouldn’t leave it on our skin.” He set Anne on her feet and stood himself, taking her hand, both of them ready to hurry off to somewhere private, barely noticing Thomas’s presence.

“I very much doubt paints intended for use by children are toxic, brother,” Thomas said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. He went to leave them to it, since even Athos would eventually notice if he failed to quit the room, but found himself pausing before he closed the door completely. Almost against his will, he turned his head to watch the couple, seemingly completely caught up in each other.

“There seems no point in taking chances,” Athos said to Anne in a low, amused voice.

Anne grinned at him. “You’re quite correct. We should go wash. But I would feel I’d failed in my wifely duty if you died of poison while I cleaned myself, so I insist on you bathing first.”

“So I can watch you perish?” Athos kissed her forehead. “No, I suppose we’ll have to bathe at the same time.”

“It is the sensible decision,” Anne said, nodding her head, still with that irrepressible grin. “Half as much work for the servants, as well, if they only need to pour one bath.”

“You are a wise mistress indeed,” Athos said, taking her into his arms and looking down at her, not kissing her, just holding her and smiling at her with love in his eyes.

Thomas left then, a small hard stone curled in the pit of his stomach, feeling nauseous. It was a fake, all a fake, and Athos too stupid to see. Shouldn’t Athos be roused to suspicion just because of the lack of interest Anne showed in his younger brother? After all, when had anybody preferred Athos to Thomas if it wasn’t for his money or title? Especially a woman. Athos was the quiet, uninteresting brother, always in a corner, making people uncomfortable. Thomas was the one people always went to, the one they liked.

But these days, that had changed, seemingly. Athos was outspoken, cheerful, always laughing and joking, radiating happiness so that those around him felt it too. Even Thomas’s friends had found him a better host than they expected, and had left asking for him to visit, for him to invite them again, for him to see them at parties. With his wife there to keep him interested and engaged and exuding joy Athos could almost seem charming and witty, for God’s sake, qualities that Thomas thought he would never have competition in.

Catherine showed signs of preferring Athos, as well, but that didn’t sting Thomas’s pride. He’d known Catherine since they were children, and he knew exactly what she wanted. She wasn’t charmed by Athos, wasn’t really fond of him, whatever she convinced herself, she was just slavering over the title of comtesse. She craved it. Undoubtedly that had been what drew Anne to Athos as well. But Catherine at least bridled with pleasure when Thomas complimented her, and since he didn’t care for her either, her desire for Athos’s title and money hardly mattered. They would eventually marry and have a few brats for her to handle and if she tried to interfere with his life too much, he’d see she regretted it, and that was it. Anne was different. He wanted her, and she dared to act like she didn’t want him. 

Athos was going to break to pieces when he realised what his wife really wanted, when he realised all his happiness was just a fool’s dream, but Thomas couldn’t bring himself to feel bad for the imbecile at the moment. Athos had Anne willing to do anything at all to keep him under her spell, but instead of using that and using her, Athos unmanned himself with all that pathetic, stomach-turning affection, giving her everything she wanted and professing his adoration incessantly. If he had Anne Thomas would never prop up her smugness with such displays. Instead, he would remind her of her place and keep her there, he would master her the way she clearly longed for him to. He found himself dizzy with picturing it.

He could hear them now, running about upstairs, hear a thump and a squeal, and then laughter. Probably chasing each other with paint or some other childish game. Thomas would never behave like that – he could remember his dignity. The Comte de la Fère using his bedchamber as a place of silly fun, abandoning his duties to act like a lovesick fool, and treating his wife like a combination of master and closest confidante… Nicolas would be turning over in his grave.

Athos should have married Catherine. They could have been prudish and dull together. Thomas could imagine it very clearly – shrewish, opinionated Catherine easily managing his quiet brother, the two of them entombed in this country estate, growing old together in boredom and misery. They would have suited each other exactly. And meanwhile, Anne de Breuil could have fallen into Thomas’s arms. No doubt if he’d attended that stupid hunting party that was exactly what would have happened. He wouldn’t have treated her badly – she was from a respectable family, supposedly, if not a dazzling one, and that meant treating her like a peasant or a streetwalker would have been beneath his consequence. Instead of a marriage, though, he would have offered her a carte blanche, a position as his mistress. She would have attended wild events with his friends, clinging to his arm and giggling at his jokes, that green gaze fastened adoringly on his face. She would have tried to persuade little gifts out of him using her mouth and her body as payment and he would have bestowed them or held them back as was his right. He would have laughed in her face had she ever suggested meeting his family, or asked to make their arrangement into something more respectable, or begged for declarations of love. He might have set her up somewhere – in Pinon, in Rouen, in Paris, it hardly mattered. She would have been available whenever he wished for her, that was the important part. She would be expensive, no doubt, but he knew he could easily have managed her. He would have had her, had all the favours Athos enjoyed right now, but without needing to debase himself with the maudlin affection Athos displayed. Thomas found himself breathing harder again, lost in imagining that world, where whatever he wanted from Anne, he could take.

He snarled to himself quietly. There was a pretty girl in the village who’d been making eyes at him lately. He decided abruptly that he would go and visit her. It would cost him only a few coins, and that only if he bothered to pay - a peasant’s virtue had little value, and it was unlikely she still had hers, or that any husband would care if she’d lost it before him. Her eyes were blue instead of green, and she had the undefined bones he thought were common to the lower classes, but she had long dark curly hair that he could fist his hands in. She would do.

For the moment, she would do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So writing this (and the one other POV segment for Thomas later on) actually made me feel physically ill. Like, it was very interesting to do, but it actually ruined my desire for lunch. Because trying to see from his point of view is actually horrifying.


	10. Athos

“I love spring,” Anne said dreamily. 

“So far I haven’t enjoyed the season much,” Athos said with faint disappointment, and immediately felt ungrateful. He didn’t want to whine but it was hard not to. He had gotten used to spending most of every day with her, and the last week had been lonely.

Anne rolled her eyes at him, lounging on the bed in their new room. It had been her suggestion to move rooms during the spring-cleaning, because it was time for the part of the house Nicolas had occupied to stop seeming like a tomb. Athos had agreed immediately – as much as he enjoyed having Thomas home again, it had made it abundantly clear he and Anne needed more private space, and would probably need even more someday if they were blessed with children. The previous comte had occupied a great deal of the house. Athos now had his father’s old study for himself, Planchet and Anne’s maid Kitty had small rooms nearby instead of having to share the general servant’s quarters, and there were rooms along the corridor for a new babe and nurse to someday occupy. Their new bedroom wasn’t Nicolas’s old one, though – not because Athos found the idea disturbing, although he did, but because Anne had insisted this room was far better. And it was lovely, Athos could admit, sunlit and sweet-smelling.

Between her efforts managing the move and the aforementioned spring-cleaning, though, Athos had scarcely seen his wife in the past week. He’d filled the time hunting, shooting, sparring, talking and playing cards and billiards with Thomas, which had been nice in a way, but after a time Thomas’s presence wore on him in a way Anne’s never could, leaving him annoyed and dissatisfied. However, today Thomas was spending the day with his future father-in-law, so there would be nothing to distract Athos from missing his wife, and that was worse.

“We’re nearly done with all the cleaning, actually,” Anne said now. She shifted onto her side, moving her leg so that her blue skirt inched up it, revealing smooth, eminently touchable skin. “In fact, I think the housekeeper is more than able to manage the last touches without my input. She agrees.”

Athos’s face lit up. “Yes?”

“She politely indicated it would be good if we weren’t in their way,” Anne said.

“Are we to be kicked out of our own house, then?” Athos said, moving to lean over her and drop a light kiss on her lips.

“Oh, nothing like that! Merely that perhaps we should occupy ourselves in our room, or go picnic in the meadow, or some such thing,” Anne arched up to deepen the kiss, then let herself fall back onto the bed lazily, grinning at him. “If my husband can clear his schedule, of course.”

“I will tell Planchet that he is only to let through messengers in the event of fire, death, or outright war,” Athos vowed, mock solemn. “Actually, maybe only in the event of war. I know my priorities.” 

“So,” Anne said, leaning her head on her arm and regarding him through her lashes. “What will it be? Stay trapped in our new room? Wander about Pinon? Visit our meadow again now that it’s warm enough?”

“If we have all day, I suppose we can do all of those,” Athos murmured. “Guess which one I want to do first?”

She laughed as he let himself fall back onto the bed with her.

Some time later, they helped each other dress again, choosing not to call the maid or valet. When they had the time, it was more pleasant to do this themselves, more intimate. He loved helping her dress almost as much as he loved undressing her. His Anne always wore light colours, colours that seemed to glow in the sun, giving her the almost otherworldly luminescence that had so captivated him the first time he saw her, and it still captivated him now. The only time he’d ever seen her wear a darker dress was the portrait he’d had done of her – she had been trying to look properly dignified, like a comtesse instead of a milkmaid, she told him. He never thought she looked like a milkmaid. An angel, perhaps, but not a milkmaid.

“Leave my hair alone, you fiend,” Anne said threateningly as he started trying to help arrange it again. He could never match the efforts of her maid, but he was sure he could achieve something. “I remember the knot you created last time. I’ll just leave it loose.”

He loved her hair loose, a curly dark mane framing her face and brushing her shoulders, shorter now than when they met. It made her look even more angelic, smiling up at him through a cloud of smoky curls like that. It also made him feel like he could touch her hair whenever he liked it, run his fingers through it – on the rare occasions she left it up in the elegant chignons her maid achieved, he always felt a sense of guilt about messing it up. She never minded, though.

Anne stole quickly into the kitchen, grabbing some apples and rolls for their impromptu picnic and managing to escape without the cook seeing her and insisting on anything fancier. They didn’t really need to ride to get to their usual spot nearby, the tree was close enough to walk, but it saved having to carry their supplies and would be useful for the ride to Pinon after. They only took one horse, though, Anne holding to Athos’s waist, and he urged the horse to go faster than he normally would just to hear her exhilarated laughter ring out, her body shaking with it. He could feel the beat of her heart against his back and her breath against his neck and he thought it was impossible to be this happy.

They all but tumbled off the horse when they got there, Athos tying their mount up quickly to the old tree nearby while Anne spread the blanket she’d brought for them to sit on. They always picnicked here when they could spare the time, moving the blanket between sun and shade depending on the temperature. Today Anne set it in the sun.

“Spring is so beautiful here,” Anne proclaimed, spreading herself out on the blanket, savouring the warmth. “I’ve never seen so many green and growing things.”

“I suppose Paris isn’t really known for its greenery,” Athos admitted. “Still, we should visit sometime soon. It’s barely a day’s travel away, after all, and it’s been some time since my family rented a house there and caught up with everything. We could attend all the parties, put in appearance at court, visit the most elegant shops…”

“Because you so adore parties and shopping?” Anne raised a mischievous eyebrow at him.

“I adore you, that seems enough,” he said.

“And I adore spring at Pinon and la Fère,” Anne said definitely. “Perhaps next year. For now, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere, especially not Paris. I would much rather be happy than be fashionable.”

“You would have us grow into country nobles, with no influence and no awareness of the outside world,” he said severely, then broke into a smile. “I like it. That sounds like an excellent scheme. Pass me an apple, will you?”

“Perhaps you could send Thomas to catch up on styles and gossip,” Anne said, tossing one to him. “He likes Paris more than the two of us put together, and it would give us more privacy.”

“Privacy? We have dozens of rooms,” Athos said, though he had thought the same thing a few times. “It’s amazing we don’t lose each other.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. I suppose when he and Catherine get married he’ll be scarce enough,” Anne said, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “We’ll hardly see them then, especially if they have children to keep them busy. Even if they do live with us.” A shadow passed over her face and she bit her lip.

“Anne,” Athos said, shifting even closer to her, figuring out what she was worried about. “My mother did not have me until she had been married for _years_. We haven’t even been married for one year. It will happen when it happens.”

“Of course,” she said breezily, but he’d seen the concern in her face before and it didn’t fool him.

“Besides,” he said, resting his head on her thigh, smiling up at her. “I am enjoying practicing creating a child rather more than I’d like an actual child, at this point. It would be a strain to share you with someone else. I’m just too selfish to want that right now.”

“I’m rather selfish myself that way,” she admitted, grinning back at him, her hair dangling in his face, and then lay back, stretching like a cat in the sunshine with a noise of contentment, rolling her shoulders a bit to ease the tightness of her dress. He looked forward to when it was full summer again and she could go back to wearing just the cool, thin, white underdresses she preferred again instead of semi-corseted layered dresses – according to Thomas and Catherine, they were scandalous, but he would happily put up with the scandal to see her comfortable. Besides, he thought she looked every bit as beautiful in them as in the thicker, more rigid dresses she wore during the cold months, if not more so.

Athos closed his eyes, enjoying the sunlight and the warmth of her next to him together, the sweet spring breeze and the smell of her perfume mingling. He thought he might fall asleep soon. He was already halfway to dozing.

“Pass me another apple,” he ordered lazily, some time later. 

“I don’t know about that,” Anne said, languid. “Even if we’re to be country nobles, I expect you to stay in shape, Athos, not fall into slovenliness. Eating all the apples and then just lying around in the sun…”

He looked up to see her eyes dancing as she sat back up again. “Oh, yes? So you expect me to work for my food?”

“Exactly,” she said, and pushed his head off her lap, letting it land with a thunk on the blanketed ground, and before he could respond she’d snatched up the apple and was racing through the tall cornstalks.

This wasn’t the first time they’d played this particular game, or even the tenth. Sometimes Athos thought he played more with Anne than he had when he really was a child – tickle fights and play wrestling in their room, hide and seek throughout the house, blind man’s bluff in the garden, and of course, chasing her through the meadow. However childish it was, though, there was nothing childish about where all the games usually ended up, and he wouldn’t trade this feeling for anything. He loved racing after her, sure-footed and strong. It was the thrill of the chase, the thrill of the moment, the thrill of her.

He was a faster runner than her, but she was cunning and always evaded him at the last second. Her eyes danced with joy and she giggled as she darted away from him, face flushed with pleasure and exertion, hair streaming behind her and dress twirling as she dodged and ducked his clumsy attempts. She was in longer, heavier skirts than she usually wore for this, though, and that gave him the advantage. She dropped the apple at some point, but it wasn’t an apple he was after, it was her, always her. He loved chasing her, and he loved that he knew she wanted him to catch her, and he loved the sweet, breathless noise of her laughter, and he just loved her. Completely, without restraint, without any hesitation.

He caught her eventually, spinning them around in circles before tumbling them both into a heap of helpless laughter and warm limbs on the ground, and she pressed against him, laughter fading to be replaced by the raw passion that always overtook them.

Normally when he caught her he slid down her body, finding her with his mouth first, but this time she was still wet from earlier and so when he tried she pushed him back with a laugh instead, moving into his lap and kissing him. He managed to free himself from his pants and move her skirts out of the way so they could join, and then she was rocking against him until they both were mindless with the heat and movement of it all, until she was moaning, her head dropped back in bliss, and he bent his head to her breast and moved his hands restlessly under her skirts, guiding and stroking and pressing, because even when they were outside and couldn’t undress properly he still always touched her everywhere he could. The warmth inside them was like the warmth of the fresh spring sunshine, but condensed to just them and magnified until instead of contentment, it was pure, unbridled joy.

They lay wound around each other in the grass for a while after, just letting their breathing return to normal and relishing their happiness, her lying on his chest. It was amazing, Athos thought, how close he felt to her, how tied – how the rhythm of her heartbeat and her breath seemed more familiar to him than his own, how he felt like he could say anything, do anything, be anything he wanted with her. He’d loved her from almost the moment he knew her, but every day that love seemed to grow, to intensify, so that he almost pitied the man he’d been then for not knowing it could be even better. The first time he’d chased her through the meadows, catching at the hem of her loose white dress as she laughed, he’d thought he was happier than anyone could ever be, but he was wrong since he was even happier now. Probably in fifty years he’d look back at himself now and wonder at how little he’d known as well. 

He could picture it quite clearly, he and Anne in their dotage. Her still impossibly lovely, with her fine bones, easy grace, and clear green eyes unaffected by age even as her hair greyed and thin lines spread across her face, her wit still needle-sharp, the years having only added to her dignity and air of command. Him, a grizzled old patriarch, trying to glare their boisterous grandchildren into silence but unable to be imposing when every time she catches his eye he cannot help but smile. He imagined them decades from now, duties handed off to their adult children, spending every day like this, lying about together, savouring every moment they had. He could not envision their passion for each other fading, even with age, but if it did then they could read to each other, talk, laugh, tease, play more sedate games like cards or even chess, discuss the family and life they had built piece by slow piece. It was a beautiful image.

And someday when they died, it would be in each other’s company, because he couldn’t imagine one of them could much outlive the other. They could pass into the next world hand in hand, and if heaven was half as lovely as living here with her, it would be a good way to spend eternity. He made a lazy mental note to ask to be buried beneath this tree – the family vault was all very well, but even if their souls were in the afterlife when it happened, he didn’t want to imagine he and Anne encased in cold rock and stone. No, better to lie here forever, becoming a part of this place, part of the trees and grass and quiet sunlit beauty. But death, at least, seemed a long way off. It was spring, after all.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked eventually, rolling off him and onto her side next to him to look at him, entwining their fingers on her stomach.

“The future.”

“I prefer to concentrate on the present,” Anne said. “Especially when it’s so nice.”

“Well, that’s what I was thinking,” he said. “I was picturing a future exactly like the present – in all the ways that matter, anyway.”

She didn’t have to ask him what he meant, just hummed in contented agreement.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked in return.

“How my maid is no doubt sick to death of all the stains on my dresses,” Anne said, after a little pause. They’d stained quite a few dresses this way, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret a single one.

“No, really,” he said. He could hear the faint note of constraint in her voice. Most of the time, he felt like he knew her as well as himself, both of them so open and free with each other there were no boundaries at all, but there was the occasional moment he felt her retreat somewhere into her mind that he could not follow. He knew why, knew that she didn’t want to burden him when she felt worried or stressed about something, but her troubles never seemed like a burden to him. And it was only fair for her to lay them on him – he never hesitated to burden her with his thoughts, after all.

“I was thinking about how I wish it could just be the two of us, alone forever, and that the rest of the world could just disappear,” she said, and this time he heard the raw honesty in her voice. She raised their tangled hands to her lips and kissed the back of his.

“It’s a nice fantasy,” he said wistfully, but then smiled, discarding it. “But without a maid to do your hair, it would always be one big knot.”

She laughed. “True enough.”

“Not to mention Planchet and all the other people who clean and cook and take care of us,” he said. “You might manage without them, but I’d be quite helpless.” He didn’t rely on servants half as much as the other nobles he knew, but he’d rarely had to take care of himself completely. “And we would lose the pies Jeanne makes -”

“Bertrand’s terrible long-winded stories,” she murmured wickedly.

“Talking with Remi about swords,” Athos added.

“That loss would devastate me,” Anne said, nodding.

“And don’t forget about Thomas,” Athos said. “It would be nice if he could learn to knock, but I’d hardly wish him away for all eternity as punishment.”

“No, the two of you are very close,” Anne agreed, suddenly sounding a little tired – not surprising, he thought, after running around, and then all the activities that came after. “Perhaps if I had a brother, I could understand the bond, but it was always just me, so…”

“He’s my brother,” Athos said simply, not sure how to explain it to someone who had no siblings. “Growing up, he was the one person I could always count on. Mother was distant, Father had a temper, and our tutors changed so often – it was just the two of us. He can be flighty, I know, and a little irritating at times, but there is no one I trust more.”

After finishing off the remains of the food, they rode to Pinon and wandered the few streets hand in hand, stopping by Remi to greet him. Remi flushed and stuttered when he saw Anne, but Athos was used to this reaction – he thought it was strange when any man didn’t seem amazed by his wife’s beauty. Remi was always excessively deferential around Anne, though, seeming almost frightened of her, which Athos found both amusing and confusing.

Still, it was nice to catch up with Remi, however briefly – Thomas was correct when he said Remi wasn’t an intellectual, but he was practical, friendly, sensible when not dealing with Anne, and he knew Pinon better than anyone else but Bertrand. While they talked, Anne played around with the wares he had out on the scorched and stained bench, sorting the knives, swords and various farming implements by size and shape, even grabbing a cloth for the bench to make it look fancy as she arranged them.

“As good as any shop in Paris,” Athos told her gravely, taking her arm again.

“Are you going to start mocking me again?” she said, raising an eyebrow at him and picking up a rather utilitarian knife in a threatening pose.

“Be careful,” Remi said, looking a bit to the side of her the way he always did, unwilling to stare directly at her. Athos could dimly remember Remi finding him intimidating as well, when they were younger and all Remi knew of him was that he was nobility, but it was nothing to how nervous Anne made the man.

“Don’t look so worried, I promise not to stab anyone,” Anne said, putting the knife back with a smile. “Unless my husband gets impertinent again, of course.”

“I’ll live in fear, then,” Athos said.

From there, they went to the inn for something to drink, Anne giving Jeanne a friendly nod of her head that the young woman returned.

“Thomas thinks she has a liking for him,” Athos remarked after Jeanne had disappeared.

“Thomas would,” Anne retorted. “He’d best stick to Catherine, if he wants his ale to arrive without spit in it in future.”

“If I were him, I wouldn’t want to cross Catherine either,” Athos said.

“You did,” Anne reminded him with an arch smile.

“We weren’t betrothed,” he said, dropping a kiss on her bare shoulder. “And I had much greater incentive.”

“Flatterer.”

“I am not allowed to flatter, just like I cannot mock,” Athos raised his eyes to the heavens. “Should I be silent, then?”

“I didn’t say I _disliked_ the flattery, Athos,” Anne waved her hand in permission. “Please continue.”

By the time they headed home, it was well into the afternoon, and Athos felt like the warmth of the sunlight had moved into his bones. Anne lay her head against his back and Athos let the horse go at its own speed, content to get home slowly, enjoying the present just like she’d told him to. Every part of him was awash with utter contentment. 

By unspoken mutual consent, they dismounted some distance from the house, walking the rest of the way. Anne let Athos lead the horse, slowing their progress down by stopping at every new bloom of flowers. It was early spring, so the spots of colour were still few and far apart, but the closer to the house they got the more plentiful the flowers became. Anne playfully tried to put them in Athos’s hair, giving him messy flower crowns, but he pulled them out as quickly as she could, laughing.

“Bad enough I have to deal with this pouf of a hairstyle Planchet insists is all the rage, without it being festooned with flowers,” he said with mock severity.

“Well, then, I suppose they’re all for me,” Anne said, giving the crown of daisies to the bemused horse instead, and dotting her own hair with a few tiny blue flowers. 

Athos thought she looked like some kind of goddess of the spring. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that flowers bloomed where she walked, or trees bowed towards her in greeting. She was certainly a goddess to him – he did not think he’d ever worshipped anything so intently as Anne, not honour or duty or even God himself. 

She went up to their room while he dealt with their mount. When he came in later, she was draped across the chair set at the little desk in there, the one he supposed was intended for her use since he had a study of his own. Smiling, barefoot, and holding a sprig of blue flowers in one hand, the same as the flowers in her hair, she somehow looked just as much like a deity of spring as she had surrounded by greenery.

“It is the most perfect room,” she said, still in that dreamy tone, and straightened slightly to regard him. “And look. They’re like a carpet on the ground outside. Forget-me-nots.”

He would rather look at her. He smiled, but didn’t speak – there was something in her expression that held him in check, left him silent and waiting.

“I’ll press one for you,” she continued, looking down for a moment, smile widening. She gracefully slid to her feet and approached him, a strangely serious look in her eyes despite the content smile. “As a memento of a perfect day.” Her hand came to rest over his heart.

Athos supposed it was a better memento than prying off a loose branch from the tree they’d lain under, or taking a knife from Remi’s shop. He would keep or carry or wear whatever she liked, if it made her happy.

“Athos, swear that nothing will ever come between us,” she said, and suddenly her tone was different, not dreamy at all, oddly intense.

“I swear,” he murmured, not sure why it needed to be said, when it was so obvious nothing ever would. He underscored his words by rubbing his hand gently up and down her upper arm, trying to pull her back from whatever this strange mood was. She leaned up into him and he lowered his head to hers, letting her take his mouth in a sweet kiss, but it moved from sweet to hot in moments as he tilted his head and opened his mouth more fully against hers. Then they were both walking back towards the desk, his hands dropping to rest on her waist, hers finding the back of his neck and tangling in his hair. There was a settee nearby and a bed, but the desk was closest, and he pushed her onto her back against it with the feeling of desperate relief that touching her always engendered.

It really was a perfect day. But then, Athos supposed, most of the days he spent with her were perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now the inevitable downhill journey from excessively sweet fluff to 'oh god no' begins. :)


	11. Anne

Long before there was a woman named Anne, there was a novice named Madeleine, and she lived in a convent.

When illness swept through the brothel that was something like a home to the pickpocket named Charlotte, it brought with it the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict. The local Abbott had ordered that his nuns were to help nurse in any places where the disease broke out, and his priests were to take the last rites of anyone who needed it, so as Charlotte’s world ended around her it ended to the sound of rushed, useless prayers.

Her mother was too sick to speak, let alone confess, and a good man might have absolved her of her sins despite this, but the priest taking her last rites did not bother. He kept as far back from her as possible, equally disgusted by her sickness and her lifestyle. When he turned away from her dying moments he saw her young daughter huddled by her bedside, slender and slight and lovely with potential despite her disarray, and he wanted her.

“What’s your name, child?” he said. His greedy eyes traced the fine bones in her grubby face, admired the curling darkness of her untamed hair, and probed the bare skin sticking out from the too-small clothes in a way the girl found very uncomfortable.

“Madeleine,” Charlotte lied, or thought she lied. It became true almost immediately, or at least true in the sense that no one called her anything else, because the priest decided that here was someone to save. Whether he was saving her for God or for himself, well, that was a question best left unanswered. Whatever the case, Madeleine was not allowed to return to her sinful life, and was instead pulled into a life of religious servitude.

The first weeks in the Order of Saint Benedict were torturous for Madeleine. Time given by God was not allowed to be wasted, and in the service of this, the Order had very tight schedules, filled with endless back-breaking activities and hours of prayer. The priest who ‘saved’ her was a trusted favourite of the Abbott and checked in on her often, eyes and sometimes hands wandering freely, often bringing small treats that in no way made up for this. The other novices either pitied or resented her for the attention she got, and Madeleine didn’t like either reaction.

The Order had many nuns, mostly women who had no dowries and therefore not many choices. Some, however, had joined because they were truly devout, and Sister Edith (or Lady Edith, as nearly everyone still automatically addressed her) was one such woman. She was a widow who had come from England to marry almost thirty years before, and when her husband died, she had joined the church. 

Madeleine became obsessed with Lady Edith just as quickly as the priest had become obsessed with her. When Lady Edith spoke, everyone listened; when Lady Edith ordered, everyone obeyed; and when Lady Edith frowned, everyone tensed. She controlled the world through her every action, and Madeleine watched her greedily, envying the power. She’d never seen a woman treated with such respect before, not even by other women. Soon, she was Lady Edith’s shadow, mimicking her every action and every word, forcing herself to learn that tone of authority, that upper-class lilt that Edith had in both French and English. For her part, Lady Edith simply ignored the little girl who followed her about, as completely as she ignored all irrelevant things, no matter how much Madeleine could have used her help.

She was in the convent for three years, and they were not pleasant. Madeleine quickly learnt that she could avoid some of the worst jobs by taking advantage of the priest’s infatuation with her, and since she figured she may as well get something out of it, she did so. The situation immediately worsened. Soon, the nuns were harsher towards her, cruel even, furious that this evil child was attempting to corrupt a priest of God. In turn, she had to depend more on the priest, charm him more, to keep her from starvation, canings and other mistreatments. The priest expected signs of affection in response, and his boldness and perversity grew by the week. When she crossed him, she often felt the back of his hand or worse, and sometimes even when she allowed him to do things to her he would spit on her and call her a daughter of the devil for tempting him away from God. The cruelty from the other novices and the nuns worsened further in response, all of them resenting her for avoiding the occasional harsh job and receiving the occasional extra meal, all of them judging her for her seduction of a pious man. Madeleine could not see a way to escape the vicious spiral.

Then one day, she literally saw a way to escape it. The way was a familiar face, visiting the convent, wearing monk’s garb, claiming the Pope had sent him and his two associates to take their sacred vessels to Rome. The way was Sarazin.

He’d left the Court of Miracles behind because he had ambitions, plans, or possibly delusions of grandeur – everyone had a different view on which it was. He wanted a kingdom of his own instead of the chaotic rabble of the Court, a kingdom where everyone knew who ruled. But however much he thought of himself as a ruler, he was a better thief and thug than a monarch, and he couldn’t resist the thrill of a scheme. Conning a convent out of their sacred vessels was a Tuesday for him. Of course, violently robbing a convent was generally a Wednesday as a result, because convents were very attached to their sacred vessels, and no matter what he wore Sarazin had a face that was difficult to trust.

The convent may or may not have believed he really was a representative of the Pope. Regardless of what they thought, he was sent away after a very brief meeting with the Abbot. The Order of Saint Benedict wouldn’t give up their sacred vessels until the Pope himself came to the door asking for them.

It was difficult to intercept them on their way out, but Madeleine managed it. “Oi, you,” she hissed, falling back into the street-speak she’d used for so long.

“Yes, child?” Sarazin said, with an unconvincing expression of piety and goodness.

“Know who you are. Sarazin, right?”

The next moment one of the accompanying ‘monks’ had her against the wall, the tip of a wicked knife at her throat. She stared him down with brazen green eyes, not giving a hint of fear, although she felt plenty of it.

“Who’re you?”

Madeleine was sick of the name Madeleine, by this point, but she no longer felt exactly like the Charlotte she had been. Three years of all kinds of abuse, of never being allowed to speak her mind and rarely being able to speak at all, three years of scrubbing floors until her hands bled and praying until her knees bled, three years of poisonous glares and lustful stares, had taken a toll on her.

“Clarik,” she said, taking a third option.

“S’not a name.”

“Yeah, is. It’s my name.”

Sarazin studied her, face twisted in a snarl. He looked one moment away from telling his man to kill her, but then he gave a sudden, manic smile, followed by that odd little cackle that she would become very used to in the years to come. “Right then. What you want, Clarik?”

Madeleine studied him in response. She knew he was dangerous. She’d never interacted with him in the Court – he was far above street pickpockets in their hierarchy – but everyone knew him and his friends were just as likely to slit your throat as give you a coin if you held out your hand to them. “Wanna help you,” she said, because when you had only bad options you had to pick the best of them. “I can get you those sacred vessels. You split the take with me. Yeah?”

That night, Madeleine went to the priest, the one who touched her in ways she really wished he wouldn’t. She told him that she loved him, and that if he asked to be released from his vows, they could get married, and that that was the only thing she thought would save her soul from such impure thoughts. The priest was thrilled to ease his conscience. What he felt was not lecherous, improper lust for a girl many years younger than him – it was a pure, elevating passion gifted to them by God so he could rescue his beloved from the baser life she would have without him.

She told him the best way to feel truly released from the priesthood was by a blessing from a representative of the Pope himself. She told him the man would reward them for their loyalty to the church with enough money to start their lives together. She told him it was the only way for them both to be true and pure in the sight of God.

And the next night, she waited for him by the door as he got the sacred vessels, betraying the Order he’d given his life and his soul to, and together they left the convent forever.

Anne never missed the convent, not once. She sometimes thought fondly of the rundown brothel and the women there, of the chaotic Court and the few narrow streets that had made up her world as child. On rarer occasions, she remembered the nicer parts of working with Sarazin, nostalgia turning the volatility of that life into something closer to excitement. But the convent had been a nightmare. She still burned inside with rage and shame when she recalled the looks the other nuns had given her – even, by the end, Lady Edith.

She flashed back to that same rage and shame when Catherine looked at her sometimes. Catherine would have fit into the convent perfectly. She would have had no hesitation in condemning the child for what the priest did, just as she had no hesitation in despising Anne for the actions of Athos and now Thomas.

“So, I suppose you must go to Rouen with me next month,” Catherine finished, looking down her nose at Anne.

“I suppose I must,” Anne said, summoning a faint smile from somewhere. Oh, blood of God, if she had come up with a list of the least enjoyable ways she could spend a few days, a trip to Rouen with Catherine to purchase her bridal linens would have been somewhere near the top. First, there would be all the time in the coach together with Catherine’s icy glare on her face. Then there would be the nights listening to Catherine talk to the maids at their inn as if they were mute, deaf fools. Then the shopping itself, where Catherine would believe every comment Anne made was a stealthy insult and strike back against each one with haughty rage.

But they were to be sisters, and while Anne didn’t really give a damn about anyone but Athos, it was worth trying to get along. It would make things easier once the marriage took place, and it would make Athos happy, which was now Anne’s primary concern.

He’d become the focal point of her life. She’d always been selfish – when you had no one looking out for you, you had to look out for yourself, to the exclusion of all others. Now, she thought she was selfish in an entirely different way, because she was selfish for two people instead of one. Anne wouldn’t have cared if the rest of the world burnt down around them, except Athos cared, so she had to.

She tried to pretend that was why she didn’t tell him about the way Catherine talked down to her or the way Thomas watched her, but that lie was unconvincing even to herself. Really, she didn’t tell him because when she weighed up the risks and the rewards for her, there was nothing to gain. Oh, probably he would tell Catherine off for being rude to his wife, but the betrothal contract was binding and Catherine _would_ live with them, and it wasn’t like Athos could constantly police the way Catherine looked at her or spoke to her. All that would happen was that Catherine would hate her more for going to him.

With Thomas, the risks were even higher, and the rewards non-existent. If she told Athos that Thomas’s behaviour towards her scared her, if she explained that she didn’t view Thomas’s comments as the harmless joking everyone else took them for, that his stares and actions made her feel unsafe, Athos would comfort her, of course. He would think she was being a little irrational, because in his view his little brother was completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but she had no doubt he would try to help. Just like with Catherine, he would talk to Thomas, who would be all confused hurt, amazed she had reacted to his brotherly teasing so strongly. There would be no discussion of Thomas moving away. He would apologise with a hint of a smirk only she would see, he would be smug with the knowledge he was getting to her, and he wouldn’t change his behaviour at all except maybe to hide it even better. Athos would be disappointed and unhappy, and perhaps constraint would grow between them once he knew she hated and feared his beloved brother, whatever he swore to the contrary. 

Anne had not told someone she needed help and received that help at no cost since she was a very small child. More often than not, she had received indifference, disdain, disapproval, or even hatred when she pleaded for assistance. At best, the people she looked to for help had been helpless themselves; at worst, they had been actively malicious. She had always had to help herself. However much she loved Athos, that hadn’t changed.

Anne was picking flowers in the garden when she looked up and saw Athos and Thomas approaching. She smiled, but the smile was all for Athos. Easiest just to ignore Thomas and hope he disappeared – into Hell, preferably. “I’ve been gone from your side less than an hour, and here you are again,” she said to Athos.

He often interrupted her when she was in the garden, claiming she was even more irresistible than usual when surrounded by flowers, if only because of the look on her face. Sometimes she would go out there just to soak in the beauty of the place and he would come up behind her quietly, and she would feel a smile come onto her face and turn because she knew from her own happiness that he had to be close by. Somehow she could sense him just from the joy that rose and spread through her, warming her even before she was consciously aware of his presence. It was a kind of magic. Sometimes he would even quietly pick a sprig of forget-me-nots just for her, not for the house, and she would light up at the gesture because she knew that flowers meant almost nothing to Athos except for the pleasure they gave her.

“I was pining,” Athos said. “Also, I finished writing my letters. I thought perhaps we could go riding?”

“Perhaps even somewhere besides Pinon, this time,” Thomas said.

Anne glanced at her basket and decided she could get her maid to place flowers in all the rooms today. It was hardly an arduous task, after all. “Just a few more blooms,” she said.

Most of the basket was forget-me-nots, her favourite flower. She had pressed one into a locket for Athos, and now he wore it about his neck nearly every day, often fiddling with it idly as he wrote correspondence or did accounts, and putting it carefully away at night. He told her he wished he’d had the foresight to get the painter to do a smaller version of her portrait so that he could have that as well, but it wasn’t entirely necessary, since every time he so much as glanced at the locket he could picture her face perfectly. She had responded by pointing out it wasn’t necessary anyway since if he wanted to see her face, he could just call a maid to go find her, or even just look up from his desk.

The garden had probably once been sculpted and manicured to the absurd levels she’d seen in other nobleman’s homes, but had been allowed to grow freely for many years now, so different types of flowers were all around. It was neither entirely tamed nor entirely wild, and Anne liked it, especially when the sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was nothing at all like Paris.

Anne quickly picked a few more, but when she reached out and grabbed a rose she was overhasty, one of the large thorns stabbing into the skin between her thumb and forefinger. It went quite deep and was surprisingly painful, so painful that she let out a quick curse without thinking as she yanked her hand back, the tip of the thorn coming with it. In the Court of Miracles, it would have been a casual exclamation, uttered a dozen times a day even by women and small children. In a nobleman’s garden, said by a gracious lady in a lovely white dress, it was as out of place as a pile of garbage would have been on the lawn. The expletive almost seemed to float in the air.

“Where did you learn _that_?” Thomas said, amazed.

“Anne, are you alright?” Athos said, more concerned with her injury.

She winced, holding it out to him. “Just a scratch.”

“More like a stab,” Athos said, looking at it closely. “The tip’s still deep in there, as well.” He pulled off his cravat and wrapped it loosely around her hand, which was now bleeding steadily.

“I could try and pry it out,” Thomas suggested, reaching for the knife he wore at his belt, which was far too long and sharp to be a useful implement in this situation.

“I’d rather you didn’t stab my wife, even by accident,” Athos said dryly. “But Planchet’s quite good with wounds – I’m sure he’ll be able to help.”

“She should sit down while you go and get him, so as not to make it worse,” Thomas said, gesturing to a nearby bench.

Athos nodded, giving Anne a quick kiss and then heading off before she could come up with a reasonable protest. Thomas reached out and took her wounded hand under the pretence of checking the cravat was tied securely around it, so no blood would get on her dress. She resisted the urge to yank her hand back.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever actually died by flowers,” Anne said, just to fill the silence. She wished she hadn’t spoken a moment later – it would only encourage him.

“Well, some are poisonous, I think,” Thomas said, giving her a slow, unnerving smile. “There’s a lesson in that, isn’t there?”

“Of course there is,” Anne said dryly, knowing it wasn’t what he meant, but also knowing she wouldn’t like whatever point he was trying to make. “The lesson being, I should wear gloves to do this.”

“I meant, that however harmless something seems, it can still be dangerous,” he said. With the hand that wasn’t holding the makeshift bandage, he stroked along her bare arm. “It doesn’t do to underestimate.”

“I’m sorry, are you implying you’re a flower?” Anne blinked at him, choosing to be blunt. If he kept touching her like that she would deliberately get blood on his nice ruffled shirt, she decided. “I’m fairly sure any poet would recognise that if either of us is a rose, it’s me. And if that’s the case, you should be more careful about touching me, Thomas, because my thorns are as sharp as knives.”

“Perhaps you’ve already stabbed me in the heart, then,” he said. 

Abstractly, Anne could recognise that most women would find him attractive – all artfully tousled hair and dark stubble, looking at her so intently, romantic declarations dripping off his tongue like honey. But the possessive look in his eyes and the cold stroke of his hand on her arm made her feel like throwing up.

She was used to this, as well – it was just another one of the phases he cycled through, never settling on one mood or one attitude long enough for her to relax and grow used to it. Sometimes he seemed to want to woo her, other times he wanted to embarrass her, other times to scare her. He was like a spoilt little boy, desperate for a reaction, regardless of what it was. The only constant was his intense focus on her. Well, and how sick he made her feel – the way she seemed to grow cold with fear in his presence, the way her stomach lurched with disgust and her throat ached with unexpressed fury.

“I can only dream,” she said quietly, voice thick with hatred, skin prickling. She wondered for the first time if she’d been overhasty in burying her knives – but they should be there still, even if they were dirty and rusted. Or perhaps she could simply take a new one from Remi’s workshop. She doubted he’d complain or even tell anyone, what with how he idolised her. But then what? She could hardly threaten Thomas with a knife, no matter how inappropriate he acted.

“Anne?” Athos reappeared, still looking concerned, and flanked by Planchet and one of the maids. “How are you doing?”

Anne pulled her injured hand away from Thomas, thankful that he let go immediately, even more thankful he’d stopped stroking her in that disturbing way. She carefully unwrapped the handkerchief. “Still bleeding a little, but not much,” she reported. “I would rather not have half a thorn in my skin for life, though.”

Planchet went to work quickly and efficiently, extracting the tip of the thorn, applying salve, and wrapping a far more professional-looking bandage around her hand.

“You probably shouldn’t be handling reins,” Athos said.

“Are you offering to share a horse?”

“Everything that’s mine is yours,” Athos said, nothing but absolute honesty in his face and voice. She swallowed hard against a sudden lump in her throat, because the way he felt about her would never stop being surprising, just like the way she felt about him. “You know that.”

“Yes,” she said, and leant into him, savouring his warmth and strength. “I do.”


	12. Catherine

“Perhaps we should have gone to Paris,” Catherine said, lip curling at another inferior fabric. Paris was so crowded this time of year, though, and everyone knew you could get better material for cheaper in Rouen, even if the shops weren’t as attentive or genteel. “Perhaps there, I would not have to endure my eyes being so continually offended by this rubbish.”

“I quite like it,” Anne said, tilting her head critically. “It’s a lovely shade of blue.”

Catherine waved her hand for the woman to take it away, turning her scowl on Anne instead before she remembered she was trying to get along with her. Obviously, the woman was still beneath her in everything but the title she’d gotten from seducing Athos, but it had become clear over the past months that if Catherine wanted any authority in the house she was soon to occupy, she would need Anne’s approval. It was humiliating to try and make peace with the woman, but Catherine would not be a nonentity in her own home, not for anything.

She had originally imagined that Anne would fail at running the place and that Athos’s infatuation would fade in time. If that had been the case, when Thomas brought Catherine back to the house as his bride, she could easily have taken over managing the servants and everything else, occupying her rightful place as comtesse in everything but name. Unfortunately, Anne had somehow managed to scrape up enough knowledge to keep the place standing, and Athos was as besotted as ever.

“It’s not so bad, I suppose,” Catherine said with bad grace. She had found most of what she was looking for on the first day, luckily, and now with their trip drawing to a close, they were looking for fabrics they could have made up into day dresses. Catherine hesitated, and made a great concession, saying grudgingly, “The colour would look nice with those flowers you always wear.” 

“I think I have enough dresses for now,” Anne said, looking surprised. “It’s not as if we go a great many places. But thank you.”

“You’ll have to begin attending events at some point,” Catherine said, sliding into a lecturing tone. “The Comte de la Fère can hardly afford to avoid fashionable society entirely. You’ll need to make connections, after all.”

“I don’t see why,” Anne said mildly. “Our friendships can have no effect on Pinon or the estate, surely.”

“Not now, but someday when you have children, you’ll want them to marry well, surely?” Catherine said. “The line can hardly afford every generation marrying without -” she bit her tongue on the sour remark, and tried to return to her previous point. “Well, you will want them to marry well. Parties in Paris may not seem relevant _now_ , but over time, they become so. It is the connections we make that will keep the de la Fère name alive and influential for centuries to come.”

Anne gave her an odd little smile. “No one could be more dedicated to that end than you, Catherine. I hope Thomas appreciates it.”

Catherine wondered if Anne was mocking her. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

When they exited the store, the street was crowded. Catherine wrinkled her nose, electing to wait for the flood of people to pass before they went to their coach. Anne waited beside her.

“Clarik?” a man said, stopping by them, looking at Anne in confusion. “Clarik, that you? You look fancy as.”

Anne’s expression didn’t change at all, not even to confusion, which would have been understandable. “Sorry, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“Been a while,” the man said, giving her a grin. He was grimy, heavily muscled, and wearing simple clothes, probably a dockworker or something similar. “Paris, going back maybe three years ago, somefing like that. Name’s Gilles, remember? We worked -”

“Like I said, you’re confused,” Anne said, and now there was something of an edge to her voice. She let one hand drop to fist in her skirt, resting just on her thigh, and Gilles’s eyes followed it. He blinked, looking suddenly nervous.

“Ah, yeah, must be,” he mumbled. “Sorry for bothering you and all.” He touched his hand to his forelock and disappeared back into the crowd.

“What a rude man,” Catherine said disapprovingly. “You really didn’t know him? You’re from Paris, after all.”

“It’s a big city,” Anne said. “And how would I know someone like him?”

Catherine shrugged, but she found the exchange stayed with her. She thought about it that night, and in the carriage on the way back, and when she was home in our own bed. She thought about Anne’s frozen face when the man addressed them, and Anne’s sharp voice when he wouldn’t leave.

“What is your family like, Anne?” she asked one day, dining with her and the two brothers. “I don’t believe we’ve met any of them, have we?”

“You haven’t,” Anne said. “My parents died years ago and I have no brothers or sisters. There’s no one to meet.” 

“I was introduced to her cousin Jean,” Athos supplied. “When I first met Anne.”

“Why not invite him to stay sometime? You must miss your family.”

“My cousins are I are hardly close,” Anne said, still completely calm.

“But you must have lived with them, after your parents passed,” Catherine probed. “Surely they must be more like siblings than cousins. After all, accompanying you to a hunting party that lasts longer than a week isn’t the act of an uninterested cousin. Perhaps they care more for you than you think.”

Anne shrugged. “They never viewed me as a sibling, or I them. I think perhaps they resented me for intruding on their family. Jean was the kindest, but he’s quite dissolute – his idea of kindness was teaching me curses and allowing me to tag along on his less disreputable adventures. I could contact him, perhaps, but I doubt he’s given much thought to me in the past year. The truth is, so long as he has a few coins to risk on cards, Jean never thinks of anyone.”

“What are the names of your other cousins?” Catherine continued, eyeing her closely. Athos frowned, looking at Catherine with some suspicion. She made an effort to look less like she was interrogating Anne, sitting back, smiling at her in as friendly a way as she could manage, and holding up her hands innocently. “I simply wish to know more about my soon-to-be sister. I feel we’ve grown closer of late, but if my curiosity is still too forward, feel free to ignore me.”

“Not at all,” Anne said smoothly. “Jean is the oldest by about four years, then there is Claude, and two years after there’s Isabeau, and then finally Guillaume, who would be about five and twenty now. I met them only rarely before my mother died, and we never bonded.” 

She was too smooth, Catherine decided, too practiced. She sounded like she was telling the truth, but Catherine found herself doubting every word that came out of the little hussy’s mouth. Catherine ignored the little voice in the back of her head that suggested she was allowing her hatred of Anne to make her jump to conclusions, and that what she knew amounted to very little. There was something suspicious about Anne, she was sure of it, and she had never allowed the voice of caution in her head to check her actions before.

“None of them felt protective of their little orphaned cousin?” Catherine asked, trying to look sympathetic. “That’s cruel of them.”

“Anne is plenty good at protecting herself,” Athos said, giving Anne another one of those soppy smiles that always disgusted Catherine.

If Athos had chosen her, of course, she probably would have gotten used to them, learnt to appreciate them even. Certainly, Thomas would never give her looks like that. If Athos hadn’t been seduced, Catherine would be the one in Anne’s position – adored by her compliant husband, obeyed by a household of servants, respected as the Comtesse de la Fère. Probably more adored, obeyed and respected, in fact, because Catherine at least would deserve it.

She gave up any thought of trying to get along with the loose woman who had tricked her way into their lives. If she was right, then Anne was a liar, and Anne would pay.

“Perhaps you should write to your cousins anyway,” Catherine said.

“If you want to, Anne, you know I would be more than happy to have anyone in your family to stay,” Athos said to Anne genuinely, and she smiled at him. 

“Do you really want to have poor relations hanging off my family like leeches?” Thomas asked Catherine in a horrified undertone as Athos and Anne focused on each other. “We’d never get rid of them.”

Anne caught the last sentence. “Thomas is right, frankly,” she said.

“Sorry, what did he say?” Athos asked.

“That if I invited my family we’d never get rid of them,” Anne said, innocently relaying the comment, and Athos’s expression darkened.

“Even if he’s right, he shouldn’t have said so,” Athos said, giving Thomas a look of admonishment. “If you’d like to see them, you should invite them, Anne. And if you never wish to see them again that’s fine as well. But it is completely your choice.”

“Then I think I’ll go for the second option,” Anne said firmly. “You said it yourself when you met me – Jean is not much of a cousin. The rest of them are even worse. I’m happy having only you as my family, Athos. You and any children we happen to be blessed with.”

Catherine thought that Anne found it far too easy to keep Athos wrapped around her little finger, and that her methods were underhanded and despicable. Of course Athos would never question her stories when she fawned over him so obviously.

“I don’t count as family, darling Anne?” Thomas gave her a complicated look, a smirk tugging at his lips. “I am distraught.”

“Well, if Athos said my family is his family, than I suppose his brother must be my brother as well,” Anne said sweetly. “It is difficult to escape family, no matter how unpleasant they can be… not that I consider you in the same group as my cousins, of course. You’re on an entirely different level, as you like to remind me.”

Athos raised an eyebrow at that one, shooting Anne a look. “Some private joke I missed?”

“I guess you’ll have to work it out yourself,” Anne teased, leaning over the table towards him, relaxing for the first time since the beginning of the meal.

Catherine concentrated on her food, but she was still thinking.

“Do you ever think something might be off about Anne?” she asked Thomas a few days later, when she was visiting.

She’d asked the question without preamble, just walking straight into the room, so he jerked his head up in surprise from cleaning a pistol. “I didn’t realise you were here,” he said.

Catherine gave a little shrug. She didn’t always warn him when she planned to visit, just as she didn’t have the butler announce her. She was his betrothed, after all, and it was best to make it clear from the start that while she would be dutiful she would also expect to be a priority for him. “I think there’s something wrong with Anne.”

“You’ve thought that for a year now,” Thomas said.

“No, you don’t understand. In Rouen a man came up to us, insisted he knew her,” Catherine nodded portentously. “He called her by a different name. He was Parisian, just like her, and he seemed certain he recognised her. He was very low class, disreputable, even.”

Thomas blinked. “So she has a nickname. And an old servant.” But she saw him frown, thinking things through. “How did she react?”

“She claimed they didn’t know each other, but you should have seen her face,” Catherine said. “It was like she’d seen a ghost.” This wasn’t strictly true, but she liked the effect. “I wonder if there’s more to her past than she’s told Athos?” 

“You think she changed her name to distance herself some scandal?” Thomas raised his eyebrows, considering it. “An affair before she met him, perhaps, or something like that. Possible, but unlikely. Have you been reading many novels lately? My father always said they made women fanciful.”

“The man who came up to her, he spoke and looked like the worst kind of street scum,” Catherine said, choosing to ignore this. Surely she was the least fanciful lady in France. “And he seemed to expect her to be the same. It just made me wonder if perhaps she is even less respectable than she claims.”

Thomas’s frown deepened. “She does sometimes seem…” he searched for the words. “If you pay close attention, she does do odd things sometimes. She knows words no gently bred lady should know, for one thing.”

“You told me yourself that friend of yours said her Italian is that of the slums,” Catherine reminded him. “And her diction in French is fine, of course, but sometimes it seems to lack polish. Just on the occasional word or phrase.”

“The way she sits a horse, as well,” Thomas said thoughtfully. “In the beginning she would always go to straddle it, you know. It’s only lately she looks comfortable sitting properly.” Then he shook his head, dismissing it. “I think we’re becoming paranoid, though. What are we talking about? Imagining Anne is some peasant aping the manners of a lady? We would have noticed long ago. People like that can’t hide what they are.”

“But we _have_ noticed all along,” Catherine pounced on this. “Right from the very start, we both saw there was something odd about her, something off. From the moment your brother brought her home we sensed it.”

“Her bone structure is not that of a peasant,” Thomas said. “You can always tell. They’re so… unformed.”

“Well, perhaps she’s a by-blow, then,” Catherine said. These days enough nobles rolled around with peasants that fine bones were no longer a reliable indicator of class, as Thomas seemed to think. She was sure they once had been, that was what she’d been told, but that was back when times were purer and the class distinction more rigorously ensured. Obviously, there was a certain nobility of expression all peasants still lacked, regardless of their antecedents, but Catherine had never thought Anne’s features all that distinguished to begin with.

“I doubt Athos would care if she was. He may even know,” Thomas said. “He’s besotted with her, absolutely fanatical, and it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for him to conceal whatever her origins are just to ensure we’re polite to her.”

“Except she clearly thinks he’ll care,” Catherine said. “Or else, why continue to lie about whatever it is? If he knows everything and doesn’t care, why still lie about her first name? We would hardly assume she was a peasant based off just her name, even if it is a strange one.”

“What name was it?” Thomas asked.

“Clarik,” Catherine said with a sniff. “What an odd and ugly name.”

“It could be a surname,” Thomas mused. “Of course, lying about her family name would be even more suspicious, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Catherine said, smug he was finally agreeing with her.

Thomas rubbed his fingers across his stubbled chin thoughtfully. “Well, then. I have friends in Paris. A description does not do much, but the name ‘Clarik’ is distinctive, and there cannot be many de Breuils even in Paris. It will probably take a while, and be quite expensive, but I should be able to find out a few things about our Anne. Odds are that it is nothing, but we don’t lose much by checking.”

“What do you think Athos will do if she was lying about her name and respectability?” Catherine wondered, beautiful visions flying through her mind. Anne disgraced, humiliated, sent away, discarded. He would definitely end the marriage, have it annulled on some grounds. Athos might not be as aware of his consequence as Thomas was, but even he had enough pride in his lineage to be horrified at marrying some Parisian pauper. “Athos, with someone like that… the story would be a scandal. The Comte de la Fère couldn’t stay married to someone so far beneath his station. Athos would be forced to get rid of her.”

“In some ways you understand my brother, but in others you mistake him completely,” Thomas said flatly, and talked over Catherine when she opened her mouth to disagree vociferously. “He won’t care about the scandal or her station – well, he will, but not like you or I do. The issue isn’t whether she’s respectable or not, it’s whether she’s lying or not. Athos gives his trust to people completely, and if he loses it, it will be lost that completely as well. I don’t know if he’d throw her out or disavow the marriage or just find somewhere else for her to live so he’d never have to deal with her again, but whatever he did, he would never forgive her.”

“We’d be free of her, whatever happened,” Catherine said spitefully, “So it hardly matters.”

Thomas paused. For a moment he looked almost trapped. “Yes,” he said after a while, “Yes, I suppose you’re right, we might never see her again. Athos would ensure she ended up in a convent or something, probably. That would be very likely, if such a thing were true.” He shook his head, and now his voice turned hard. “But it’s very unlikely. You must see that this is a fantasy, Catherine, something you’ve constructed out of jealousy, not out of reality. Anne must be who she says she is.”

“Excuse me?” Catherine felt like she’d stepped onto a stair only to find out there was nothing beneath her feet.

“I will look into it, but only to ensure no one will offend my brother by accusing his wife of being some low-class lookalike named Clarik,” Thomas said, and now she could see he was completely distracted by his own thoughts, even while he was talking to her. His brow creased with concentration as he considered the matter, and a faint, nasty smile came onto his lips before he suppressed it. “Regardless, I will handle the matter, Catherine. I do not want you involved in it, do you understand? I do not want you even to reference it again.”

“You are too trusting by far,” Catherine said hotly. “You know what a snake she is. She bewitched Athos, seduced him for his title and position – is it really so unbelievable to think she used lies to help her with that? She smells of the gutter, you’ve always said so. Why change your mind now?”

“Family quarrels are one thing,” Thomas said, with an austerity that didn’t suit him. “Hunting for evidence to discredit my dear sister is quite another. You will leave this alone, Catherine. I am your betrothed and it’s within my rights to command your obedience on this matter. I will have your word on that.”

Catherine could not imagine why Thomas would suddenly change his mind, insist that Anne was honest, and order her not to attempt to find out more. But then, just as Catherine wasn’t always very observant, she was also not very imaginative, and she did not know Thomas d’Athos nearly as well as she assumed she did. She had no idea of the scenarios running through his mind, of the opportunity he suddenly saw. If Anne was a liar and he found proof, then he had something to hold over her. He would always have something to hold over her. Her position, her marriage, her whole world would depend upon his good opinion.

“But you _will_ look into it?” Catherine asked, anger making her voice shrill. “Do I have your word on that?”

“I will investigate what you have said,” Thomas said, “You have my word on that. And in return, you will let this rest, are we agreed?”

There was a strangely threatening tone to his voice. Catherine had known Thomas almost her whole life, and before this she had never once feared him – he had been the closest thing she had to a brother for a long time, now he was her betrothed, and she fully expected to marry him and be the mother of his future children. There was no one she was closer to, although that wasn’t saying much, since Catherine wasn’t someone who usually got close to people. Catherine considered herself a good judge of character. She was sure she completely understood Athos, Anne, and especially Thomas. But now, for the first time, she felt like Thomas was a stranger to her. She experienced a chill of fear at the expression on his face and tried to ignore it.

“Agreed,” Catherine spat the word finally. “But you must tell me what you discover. This is my family as well, Thomas, and I have an interest in this.”

“You must trust that I will do what is best,” Thomas replied, still with that uncharacteristic severity. “If I think that anything I hear is relevant to you, I will be sure to inform you. Otherwise, it is far better you stay out of it. Now, if I am to write a letter, I think it is best you leave.”

Catherine stared at him for a long moment, then turned and left, closing the door harder than necessary. Blood of Christ, what made Anne so special that even a man who despised her would protect her so desperately? Oh, probably Thomas thought he was protecting his family, or even protecting Catherine, but it still made Catherine fume. She was the one who had figured out that Anne was lying, and she still believed it implicitly. How dare he treat her like that – her, Catherine de Garouville!

By the time she reached home, she had worked herself into a real fury about Thomas’s order, but she had already completely forgotten that for a moment he had scared her.


	13. Thomas

When Thomas saw the parcel, he felt his heart lurch. Over the past couple of months de Marle had sent him many letters, but nothing thicker, nothing substantial. Nearly every letter had said the same thing – that de Marle apologised, but he had found nothing my lord would be interested in, was there any further information my lord could provide? But then there had been the last letter, where de Marle said he had found someone who had heard of this Clarik. Just that, no more, but he’d implied that his next communication would contain more.

He still watched Anne. He couldn’t stop. The day before he’d stared out the window as she and Athos chased each other around that stupid field again, her standing out in a white dress more fit for the peasant he suspected she was than the lady she claimed to be. Then they twirled around, embraced, and seemed to fall to the ground, and even from this distance, partially blocked by all the tall grass, it was obvious enough what they were doing. Jealousy had risen in his throat like bile, and he had almost hated his brother in that moment. Thomas often felt a little disdainful of his brother, or amused by him, or irritated by him, but he’d never _hated_ Athos before. It was all her fault.

And here it was, the parcel that would either prove Anne a liar or prove the end of Thomas’s hopes. His hands trembled as he sawed open the strings with his belt knife. It was a sheaf of papers. When he spread them out, he could see that most were dry, official looking documents, but one or two stood out because they were not written, they were drawings – one was just of a woman with dark hair, pretty but so generic as to be useless. The other was much more recognisable – the artist had gotten Anne’s posture and the tilt of her eyebrows perfectly, and if the resemblance wasn’t perfect, it was at least undeniable.

De Marle had found out Anne’s past, just when Thomas had been close to giving up on the whole project. He could barely breathe. He forced himself to calm down and picked up de Marle’s letter, which was at the front and contained a summary of what he had discovered.

It was much better than Thomas had anticipated. Truthfully, he’d expected that perhaps de Marle would find that Anne was from a line of peasants, paupers or reprobates, or that madness ran in her family, or she’d been disowned or was a by-blow, or even that she’d been married once before and concealed it. All would be reasonable things to hide when marrying the heir to a comte. Instead, he scanned it and found that a young woman named Clarik had been a thief a few years ago. She remained a suspect in several unsavoury house robberies and was notorious in London’s underworld for her feats. The guards caught her once and threw her in prison, but she had somehow escaped and fled. Once of the drawings of her was from that brief imprisonment.

From there, it only improved – or got worse, depending on your perspective. Two noblemen claimed she had seduced them and then robbed them. The first one had known her as Clarik, quite a few years ago, and she had apparently used her charms to get into his house, drugged him before any further activity could take place, and then absconded with some of his wife’s jewellery. The second had been only two years ago. A baron had taken a fancy to beautiful, widowed Antoinette de Coustes, and kept her as a mistress for a month, after which she had disappeared with valuable pieces of artwork. He was the source of the other drawing, the more recognisable one.

Anne de Breuil was a thief and a liar, and she had married Athos purely in order to steal from him.

Thomas felt an almost physical pleasure at the thought. He considered going immediately to his brother, but discarded the thought just as quickly. Athos could not ignore this, Thomas knew. Any love or trust his brother had for Anne would disappear immediately with the news that everything she had done had been utterly driven by her shallow, grasping desires and that she had never told him a single word of truth. Athos would have to annul the marriage – and then what? Have her locked up for her crimes, perhaps. But Thomas didn’t want her locked up, any more than he wanted her in a convent, or anywhere else he couldn’t get to her.

When Catherine had first suggested Anne was lying about her past, beautiful images had run through Thomas’s mind. He had pictured Anne being thrown out, disgraced, ending up in a brothel or on the streets, and Thomas of course would offer her a way out. She would have leapt at the chance of being his mistress, pathetically grateful for the desire she had mocked for so long, ready and willing to atone for her cruelty to him. He would finally have her the way he wanted.

Common sense had reasserted itself a moment later. Athos might never forgive his wife for lying to him, but Thomas found it hard to imagine him condemning her to a life of poverty and degradation. Not for lying about her name, or her reputation, or even her respectability. 

This was different. Athos might throw her into the streets for this, if he didn’t have her arrested. It was one thing for her to lie, but quite another to deliberately and cold-bloodedly entrap Athos as she had so many men before. Instead of having told a lie, Anne de Breuil _was_ a lie, every part of her. She was a dirty, venal, thieving little whore who’d set out to take everything Athos had. That would make any man violently furious, but for someone as infatuated as Athos was, the blow would be a hundred times as hard. Thomas almost wasn’t sure his brother would survive it, but that was beside the point, because he didn’t intend to tell him.

The problem was that if he told him, whatever response Athos chose would be out of Thomas’s control. Whatever suggestion he made, Athos would be unlikely to heed it. Oh, perhaps Anne would be tossed into the streets like Thomas hoped, ripe and ready to be rescued by him. But that was only one possibility. If Athos was inclined to mercy, Anne might end up in a convent; if he wanted to seek justice, she could be thrown in prison; and if he was too humiliated to want any rumour of this to spread, he might even simply confine her to a small part of the house forever with only a maid to see her. There was no way to know, and any of those options could destroy any chance Thomas had of finally settling his debts with Anne de Breuil and ending his obsession with her.

His path forward was simple: blackmail. Well, perhaps that was too harsh a word. However much she tried to hide it, Anne would probably be thrilled to give into her desires. All he would be providing was an excuse she could use to justify it. Thomas had found even the lowest of women tried to pretend they had a degree of chastity, virtue, and prudishness, needing to fool themselves as well as the husbands they ensnared. It was an amusing deceit, laughable, really.

Now he was aware how low and sullied Anne truly was, her frantic attempts to push him away made much more sense. Thomas was a man of the world, far more experienced than his brother, and if she had allowed herself to show her true colours Thomas would probably have sniffed out what she was right away. Women like her always wanted men, desperate for their attention. They were like animals in heat. Now that he knew she was a whore, Thomas could do as he’d always wished to do and treat her like one. She was owed no respect at all.

It wasn’t like he would ask for much. Nothing to destroy his relationship with his brother or his betrothed, or even her marriage, however much she deserved that. Just a half hour a day, perhaps, when they could find a private room and she could demonstrate the skills she’d no doubt developed over years of selling herself to whatever man she could find.

When he got bored, he could always expose her to Athos, unless he decided he wanted to keep her here just for the convenience of it – stays in the country could be dull, after all, but he couldn’t afford to stay in Paris year-round and even his best friends wouldn’t put him up indefinitely. It would probably take some time for him to become bored with her in any case. He had wanted her for a year already, much longer than Thomas had ever wanted any other woman, but that just meant he had a lot more frustration to work off. It was delightful to think he would be able to force her to pay him back for every snide comment and every small rejection. She would submit to him completely and he would glory in seeing her finally in her proper place. His blood heated at the thought – and the knowledge it was no longer a fantasy but a plan filled him with glee.

He placed the covering letter on the table nearby, then strode to the door and opened it. Athos was in Pinon resolving some small quarrel between two villagers. Catherine had last visited only yesterday and had said nothing about coming to see him today. Apart from the servants, there was only him and Anne in the house right now. The servants would not enter the room if he said he was talking privately with Anne, so there was little chance of anyone catching them. Perhaps he should wait, consider this further, plan out a way to do this where there was no chance of discovery at all, but he was too impatient. He felt like he had been eagerly waiting for this moment for a year, and now he could wait no more. He strode into the corridor.

“Please fetch Anne,” he said to the nearest servant, “Tell her I must speak with her in private in the lesser drawing room.”

He closed the thick door behind her quietly after she entered, and saw the way her frown deepened in response. He saw a flicker of fear in her eyes that she quickly crushed.

“What is it you need to speak to me about, Thomas?” she said. “The housekeeper will be at a standstill with the menu until I return.”

“The letter is on the table,” he said. “And if you’re thinking about trying to throw it in the fire or some other foolish thing, you should know I can easily get another.”

Anne read quickly. Every bit of colour leeched from her cheeks as she did. By the time she reached the bottom of the first page, she was leaning hard against the table, her face bone-white, looking like she might faint. “I see,” she said quietly. “And what do you want, Thomas? To castigate me for my many lies?” She moved closer to the fire, blindly seeking its warmth, but left the letter on the table instead of making any attempt to dispose of it – she was finally taking him completely seriously, he thought.

“Among other things,” he said. “Did you really think you could hide what you are forever?”

“What I _was_ ,” Anne said, a bit of fierceness coming into her voice, turning around to face him. “That is not me anymore. I love Athos. I’ve never lied about that.”

“Women like you don’t know the meaning of the word,” Thomas said. “You entice any man you want something from, suck him dry, and call that love.”

“And what do you call love, Thomas?” Anne said. “Because as far as I can see you’ve never loved anything but yourself.”

“I love my brother,” Thomas said, shaking his head in faux sadness. “This will destroy him, you know. His beloved wife, nothing but a thief and a liar! Imagine how he will look at you when he knows.” 

She somehow blanched even further, even her lips paling. “He’ll listen to me,” she whispered, but there was no conviction in her words. “He’ll understand -”

“He’ll never understand, and he’ll never forgive, and he will never look at you again,” Thomas said brutally. “He won’t hesitate for a moment to finally end this mésalliance. You’ll be lucky if all he does is throw you out. If I were him, I’d see you whipped and thrown in jail, and perhaps I’ll suggest that if he seems angry enough. He will finally be able to see what the rest of have seen all along – that a marriage between the Comte de la Fère and something like you is nothing short of disgusting. ”

“Why tell me first, then?” Anne said bitterly. “Just to rub it in? Or do you want me to run? Will that lessen the scandal somehow? Please enlighten me, because I’m lost.”

“None of the above,” Thomas said, and gave her a cruel smile. “I told you because I am willing to make a deal. As I understand it, you’re used to selling your body for far less than what I’m offering.” She stared at him in disbelieving silence for so long that he felt compelled to spell it out: “I won’t tell Athos. And in return, for as long as I want you, you’ll be mine.”

She let out a sharp bark of mirthless laughter. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am perfectly willing to share you with my brother, of course,” Thomas said, although he wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect. There was an ugly sense of smugness to the thought, though – he would have his brother’s wife, and his brother would never even know. It was only what Athos deserved for his stupidity and smug happiness. “It wouldn’t do to make him suspicious. But you will do whatever I want, wherever and whenever I want, for as long as I want. And for that, you can keep your pretence going.”

“You stand here and call mine and Athos’s love disgusting, then try and force me into something far more revolting?” Anne said, voice low and cold with hatred. “Your hypocrisy sickens me nearly as much as you do.”

“Such heat, when we both know you’ll agree to whatever I ask,” Thomas said. “Not just because I’ll tell my brother exactly who you are, but because you want to.”

“No, I don’t,” Anne said, shaking her head contemptuously. “I don’t want anything to do with you. You disgust me. And if you touch me again, Thomas, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

“So you want me to tell him the truth about you?” Thomas said, not believing her in the slightest, almost amused by her useless attempts at denial.

“Do it and I’ll tell him the truth about _you_ as well,” Anne threatened. 

“Who do you think he’ll believe? His beloved brother or the filthy, lying thief who’s lain with half of France?” Thomas gave a harsh laugh. “I wonder if he’ll have you tossed in prison. Or perhaps you’ll end your days in a convent, desperately trying to make amends for your ungodly ways.”

“I’ve been in both before,” Anne said. “So when I say I had rather die in jail than so much as let you kiss me, I know what I’m talking about.” 

“All this playing hard to get, when we both know -”

“Don’t lump us in together. _I_ know plenty of things, but you? You’re an imbecile, and however many pieces of paper listing my crimes you acquire, you know _nothing_ at all about me, or who I am, or what I want,” Anne said with flat conviction. She seemed to have reached a point beyond fear, now, and for the first time Thomas felt uncertain. “I want to make it perfectly clear to you – I have no intention of making any kind of agreement with you.”

“Athos will throw you aside the moment he sees these,” Thomas said, feeling his plan start to come apart. He couldn’t believe that the woman would rather risk poverty and even jail then simply agree to his demands. She wanted him, he was sure of that – or he had been sure of that, until right now, until seeing that stony expression on her face. He felt red hot rage rip through him at her fickleness, finally seeing all her enticements for what they were, lies, just as she was a lie. He hated her so intensely in that second he could have torn her to pieces.

“Most likely,” Anne said, toneless. “And I will take that a hundred times over if the alternative is touching you. You’re sick, Thomas. And, despite what you think, you’re beneath me.”

It was those words that sent him over the edge. With an inarticulate noise of rage, he grabbed at her, yanking her towards him by the curly dark hair he’d always wanted to touch. Anne tried to pry his hands out of her hair, tears starting in her eyes, but he walked them backwards and shoved her against the table hard enough to bruise, her back slamming into it with a dull, echoing thud. She let out a hiss of shocked pain, all the breath knocked out of her, desperately grappling with him even as she tried to pull air back into her lungs for a scream.

“I’ll teach you to remember your place,” he snarled, preparing to spit in her face. Before he could, she gave him a ringing slap and he shoved her again to punish her for it.

Anne tried to kick at him, but her skirts got in the way and he found it easy enough to keep the upper hand. All this time thinking that he would prove himself her superior by his wit, his intelligence, his self-control or even his consequence, and he found that using his body to do it was more satisfying than any other way could be. The rage was sour, but the savageness it caused made him feel more alive than he ever had before, and he revelled in it just as he revelled in the naked fear in her eyes.

He kept his grip on her hair and used it to keep her with him as he backed away from the table into the open, so that there was enough space to force her to the ground. When he did try to push her down, though, she scrabbled at his belt. For a second, he thought she had given in to him, that she was trying to undo it, but then Anne had his long belt knife in her slender white hand. He gave a huff of almost laughter and reached up to backhand her, but before he could start to swing his arm, a feeling like ice impaled his chest and suddenly his body wasn’t answering to his commands.

He fell back to the floor, confused, in pain. There was a spreading wetness on his shirt, he could feel it, but more importantly, he couldn’t stand. When he tried to, nothing moved, he couldn’t feel anything but the ache in his chest. He pulled a breath in and the resulting spasm of agony sent his head spinning.

The pain in his chest sharpened. It felt like it was splitting him in two, a red, raw agony he’d never experienced before, centred in the very heart of him. Worse than that, he couldn’t seem to breathe anymore. He tried to speak, to call for help, even to groan, but nothing came from his mouth but a huff of air that he couldn’t drag back. The colours around him were too bright. Anne, in comparison, was white as a sheet of paper, regarding him with those big green eyes, seemingly unable to comprehend what was happening, frozen with shock, hand still clenching the bloody dagger. She did not apologise. She did not yell for help. She just stood there like a statue and watched him die.

It wasn’t until the door swung open and the screaming started that Anne woke up, dropping the dagger, trying to fix things, trying to explain. And by then it was too late.


	14. Anne

The world seemed like a nightmare to Anne, and it was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. It was impossible to believe that only hours before Thomas’s death she’d woken up curled around Athos, warm and secure and loved in their sunlit room. Now she sat hunched in a dark, dank little room, four men outside in case she attempted to run. The men were a mix of villagers and servants, working in shifts to mind her. They had brought her food and taken it away when she didn’t eat it, given her a pitcher of water she ignored, and checked on her regularly, all without a word to her. She had tried to speak but Athos’s orders apparently forbade them to listen. She had been left to sit in silence and fear.

Pinon didn’t have a prison, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to keep the Comtesse there. But Athos had ordered the servants to take her away, unable to bear having her in the house, and so they had hurriedly decided to stow her in this little room over the stable instead. Technically, it had probably been intended for a stableboy to sleep in, but a groom had been more than enough for the de la Fères so it had always gone unused. She thought perhaps they had hurriedly cleaned it before bringing her there, since there was no dust, and it seemed they had brought in the cot for her to lay on, but those touches did little to make the room seem comfortable or warm.

She couldn’t seem to piece together exactly what had happened, which was absurd, since she was the only living person who’d been there for all of it. There were sharp, clear moments – her old names jumping out at her from that piece of paper, for example – but the rest was jagged and confused, a badly glued mosaic of events. Thomas’s smug smile as he threatened her. Her own hand holding a bloody dagger. The look in Athos’s eyes as he told her to make her peace with God, because she must die.

He couldn’t mean it, she was sure he couldn’t, not really. She was his wife, for God’s sake. He couldn’t have already had it annulled, not so quickly, though she had no doubt he would eventually. He would have reason to do that. Reason to renounce her, reason to throw her out, perhaps even reason to whip her as Thomas had said – but not reason to _kill_ her. Someone else might seek her death, some other, lesser man, but not Athos. He was the greatest man she knew.

But now he thought she’d murdered his brother.

Anne didn’t think she had. It had been self-defence. But when she thought back to it, she couldn’t be entirely sure of that. Of course, she’d been protecting herself when she took the knife, that part was undeniable, but had she stabbed it into him out of fear of what he was doing to her or fear of what he would say to Athos? She just couldn’t remember the thought process that had led to her stabbing it into his chest. One moment, she’d been holding the knife, the next, Thomas had been on the floor.

And she’d stood there staring, too stunned to move, too stunned even to think. It would have been the work of a moment to walk across, pick up all the papers he had, and throw them onto the fire. Alternatively, she could have bloodied her own lip or cheek the way Thomas had tried to, ripped her dress partially open, started sobbing. Any of those would have helped her situation, and if she had managed all of them, she would probably be in bed right now with a doctor attending her and a distraught husband by her side. Instead, she’d gone into shock, unable to process what was going on. She didn’t know exactly how long she had been frozen for, but the struggle must have been louder than she thought, because Catherine had been there before she could snap out of it. Why had Catherine been there?

Anne tried to work it out and found this part easy, at least. Catherine often visited unexpectedly. If one of the servants had told her that her betrothed was in a private conversation with the lady of the house, Catherine would have interrupted it just out of jealousy and self-importance. That bit made sense, then, Catherine opening the door, registering the scene, starting to scream. Anne had dropped the knife then, she remembered. The blood was no longer on her hand – it had dried and when her guards saw her scraping at it with her fingernails to flake it off, one silently brought her a basin to clean herself with – but it still felt like it was.

She couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

A few years ago she wouldn’t have panicked if a man had tried what Thomas did. She would have dealt with it coolly and efficiently. Come to think of it, a few years ago she might have agreed to the deal, if only to buy time for herself. One short year living in comfort and safety, and it seemed she’d lost her ability to face danger unflinching. He had laid hands on her, and she’d panicked, and then she had the knife – and then it had all been over. A few years ago, killing a man wouldn’t have bothered her either, not if it was in self-defence, and she was disgusted by herself for freezing in shock like a startled rabbit after this one. Thomas had deserved his death as much as any man she’d killed during her time with Sarazin, but she was no longer inured to quick, sudden spurts of terrifying violence, no longer accustomed to the grisly, meaty sound of a knife as it was thrust through a man.

What kind of fool wore a knife within easy reach when trying to force a woman? But then, what kind of fool tried that with his sister in law in the first place? Not to mention a house full of servants, and a betrothed who visited unexpectedly and rarely knocked, and a brother who was only out dealing with some minor matter and would return soon –

The memory of Athos as he came through the door knocked her off balance again, making her trembling worsen. For one moment, she had felt a surge of pure relief and love. She had been sure he would save her from this situation, from Catherine’s shrieking, from the servants’ panic, from Thomas unmoving and bloody on the floor. And then his face had changed and everything inside her changed with it. She’d tried to tell him what happened. She knew her voice had been weak, especially when contrasted with Catherine’s strident certainty, but it was like he hadn’t heard her at all. He’d looked through her, through all of them. The only things he seemed able to see clearly were his brother’s dead body and that damned letter.

And then she’d fallen apart. She had sounded nothing like herself, her voice a pale imitation, all her persuasiveness leached away by fear and shock. She could remember pleading with him, begging for his help, begging him not to let this happen, even as the servants she had been mistress of only minutes before took hold of her in grips like iron. Anne had never sounded so weak before, not in her whole life.

Just as she’d begged him to get her out of this, now she found herself begging God as she never had before. But she didn’t pray to be freed – instead, she prayed for Athos to listen to her, for Athos to realise she was telling the truth, for Athos to hold her again. She remembered his voice as he swore he would never let anyone force them apart, that nothing would ever come between them, that he would never let anything happen to her. His many declarations of his love for her played through her head over and over, a tuneless song that tormented her. She prayed for God to inspire forgiveness in Athos, to make him understand, to make him come to her.

But hours passed, time stretched, and Athos did not come. She had been abandoned by him, and she had been abandoned by God again as well, because her prayers were nothing but words in the dark, and he did not come.

My God, the way his voice had sounded when he asked if it was all a lie, if she had ever loved him. She didn’t think she would forget that until her dying day. Of course, her dying day would probably be soon. She had a few weeks, though, surely? He could still come to her. She must have time to explain, to convince him. A regular murder did not require much of a trial, but she was a Comtesse, and that meant something, didn’t it? Even a Comte could not just kill a Comtesse without a real trial. But that conversation with Athos slumped against the wall, staring at her with that look of numb horror, saying she must die, that had felt like a sentencing. Was she to die without ever speaking to him again?

There was a knock on the door. None of them had bothered to knock before when delivering food, so she shot up at the sound, ready to run to him, kneel at his feet, seize his hands, anything to get him to listen to her. But instead when the door opened it was Remi. He looked – actually, he looked to be in shock as well, even if it was nothing to hers. He had blankets piled up in his arms.

“Thought you might be cold, my lady,” he mumbled, killing her hope that Athos had sent him, that Athos had thought of her. He had called her ‘my lady’ though, which meant that Remi, at least, still considered her Comtesse.

Anne blinked at him. “Yes,” she said, then tried to force her brain to work again. If he was to be the only person who would speak to her, which seemed likely, she needed whatever information she could get from him. “Thank you, Remi. You are so very good to think of me.” Then she let a single tear slide slowly down her cheek.

He immediately went to comfort her, as she’d known he would. He was awkward about it, trying to pat her shoulder, but she buried her face against his chest and sobbed just enough to seem distraught without crying so hard as to make herself blotchy and unattractive. “There, there,” he said, and she felt the jump of his heart as she clung to him. Remi had always adored her, and he considered himself a good man, a gallant man – if anyone would be willing to tell her what was going on, it would be him.

“You know what Thomas was like,” she said to him miserably, after allowing him to comfort her for long enough that he felt he’d helped. “He attacked me, Remi, I swear.” Remi wouldn’t like the brutality of a woman stabbing a man through the heart, she instinctively knew, so she adjusted the tale to make herself sound more passive. “He was threatening me with the knife, trying to force me, and somehow in the struggle it ended up in his chest. I did nothing except try to get away.”

“I heard from the servants… your past…” Remi said, but didn’t finish the sentence, lapsing into embarrassed silence.

“And he had made up such lies about me, the most awful lies,” Anne said, using her tear-streaked, distressed beauty to its fullest effect as she looked up at him with heartbreak in her eyes. “He said he would ruin my reputation as well as ruining me, so that no one would believe me when I told of what he’d done. I have tried to explain what Thomas did, I have tried to tell the truth of it, but my husband will not listen to me.”

Remi didn’t tell her that Athos was probably just angry and grieving, that he would listen to her once he had time to calm down. He didn’t say anything, just patted her shoulder again, looking helpless. Seeing that, Anne went cold.

“He must hear me out, surely?” she asked, incredulous.

Remi averted his gaze from her face. “Set for tomorrow,” he said.

Anne opened her mouth to ask if he meant the trial, but she could see from his face he meant no such thing. The cold feeling intensified. “I see,” she managed, although she couldn’t see anything, really, not anymore. The world was blurred with tears and a horrible spreading despair that she’d never experienced before.

She loved Athos. He had to know that, at least, whatever he’d said to the contrary. And yet he would kill her on the basis of Catherine’s shrieked accusations, on the basis of that cold little letter summarising a woman even she didn’t recognise. Thomas had said he would never understand, and Thomas, it seemed, had been right. Athos had found out who Anne was and now he wanted nothing from her, not even the truth. She could never have done such a thing to him, never treated him this way – he could have murdered anyone in the world and she would have stood by his side, believing in him implicitly, knowing that he’d only done what he thought was best. Maybe he couldn’t do that, not and remain the honourable Olivier de la Fère, but she’d thought that at least that he would try to understand her reasons. But it seemed the only murder he could accept was hers.

“Am I to hang or burn?” she said, voice lifeless already. Despite that, there was a part of her mind racing ahead, looking for ways out, looking for loopholes. It seemed that self-preservation was a hard impulse to shake after all. She was a survivor, she always had been.

Remi shrugged, looking away again, shoulders heavy with misery. “Hang, he said. There’s a meadow nearby with an old tree, you know the one…”

She understood what he meant immediately, and a wave of nausea pierced her numbness for a few moments. Their field. Their tree. Why? Was it a final cruelty? Was he trying to inspire guilt in her? Was he trying to torture himself? Or did he think it would be a comfort, somehow, to die in one of the most beautiful places she knew? As well burn her with a pile of forget-me-nots as kindling.

“It’ll be private,” Remi said, unhappiness in every line of his face, still trying to find some words to lessen the horror. “Just you, him, a priest, the hangman. He won’t see you shamed in front of us all.”

Fewer people than their wedding, even. “The hangman?”

“Someone from the village, no idea who yet,” Remi said. “The last time we had a hanging it was me, and they asked me, but I can’t -”

“Tell him you’ll do it.” The blunt words escaped her before she could really follow her train of thought to its conclusion, and she saw him draw back, looking sick. Anne softened her voice, looking up at him imploringly, letting her eyes mist with tears again. “Please, Remi. If I am to die, I would like a friend to be there. And you have always been so good to me…”

“I can’t,” he managed. She thought he might throw up.

“Please,” she said again, and leant into him so that she was enfolded in his arms. She knew she must seem small and helpless to him when he held her, but also that like this he could feel the softness of her hair tickling his chin and smell the sweet scent of her perfume. “I don’t know if I am strong enough to die, but if you are there, I can look to you for my strength.”

She wondered if she was selling it too hard, but this was Remi. For a year, he had imagined himself a more chivalrous version of Lancelot, and her a purer Guinevere. He would do as she asked. And Lancelot had rescued Guinevere from an execution once, hadn’t he? The thought would nag at Remi, stories forming in his head, fantasy wrestling with duty. She needed to make sure, but she could already hear the other men at the door, so if she was to take further steps it could not be now.

“Please come and see me at least once more before then,” she beseeched him. “You are the only comfort I have left, Remi.”

The night didn’t bring rest, but it did bring anger, obliterating any trace of the numbness that had come before. Just like with the despair she’d experienced, this breed of rage was completely new to her. It occurred to Anne that although many people she’d worked with in the past had tried to take advantage of her in some way, she’d never actually felt betrayed before. She’d never trusted any of them enough to feel more than minor annoyance at them underestimating her.

But she’d loved Athos – she still loved Athos, damn her, damn _him_ – and she’d trusted him implicitly. She had opened herself up to him, sharing parts of herself she’d never shared, letting herself be weak and human, becoming full of love and hope and happiness, abandoning the habits of a life-time to be the woman he made her want to be. He had been everything to her. She had given him all she had to give, lying only to protect their love from her sordid past, and now he would kill her for that.

The rage hit her suddenly and fiercely, roaring through her. She punched the wall, then kicked it, then kicked it again. She stalked the small room, her breath coming out in furious heaves, muscles rigid with anger, close to screaming with pure unbridled fury. She wanted to kill him almost as badly as she wanted him to be there, forgiving her, saving her, loving her. There was nothing half-hearted about how she craved his death, bloodlust choking in her throat like ashes – she imagined picking up the knife she’d stabbed Thomas with and using it to slit Athos’s throat until she almost thought it was memory instead of fantasy. She pictured the house on fire, her rage hot enough to ignite it even from this distance, the rooms they had spent their days in charring away to nothing, him screaming in agony as he burnt to death in the bed they had shared. She visualised him choking and gasping on the end of a rope of his own, fingers tearing at it uselessly, his face purpling, breath stopped.

And then she pictured herself dangling on a rope the same way – it had to be only hours away, now – and the fury only grew, stoked partially by the sick fear that rose in her as well.

A soft knock came at the door a while after sunrise. “My lady?”

“Remi,” she breathed when he came in, trying to look at him like he was her only hope. It was a look she’d given many men before, but this time it was probably the truth. “Thank you for not abandoning me. Thank you.” 

She let tears well up and threw herself into his arms again, pretending to need comfort. From there, it was easy enough to lift her head at just the right time, all big wet eyes and slightly parted lips, and he took the bait, just like so many before him had, just like Athos had once upon a time. He kissed her and then he was fumbling at her clothes and the whole time she tried to think about nothing except the threat of the rope.

It was strange to do this again after so long with just Athos. He kept creeping into her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried to push him away. He was wedged under her skin like the tip of thorn. She felt like she was betraying him, which made no sense given how he’d betrayed her, but she’d loved him too intensely for even her rage and pain to entirely erase the thought.

Just as bad were the thoughts of Thomas that intruded. He had scared her badly. There were men who had physically hurt her more, but she had rarely felt as defenceless as she had in that room. He had casually stripped away all the layers of pretence that she had begun to think were real, then insulted whatever was left, looking at her as though she really were the small, disgusting creature he believed her to be. His poisonous remarks about what Athos would think of her had felt like blows, each worse than the last. When Remi touched her she had to block the memory of Thomas’s cruel hands on her, and try and forget his even crueller thoughts and desires. A year ago she would have been good enough at dissembling and partitioning her thoughts to not flinch at all, but she was not the same person she was a year ago, and struggling back into that discarded skin was difficult. Luckily, Remi was clueless. He didn’t wonder why a woman who had just barely avoided a rape would want to lie with him. He didn’t ask if a lady who loved her lord could truly fall in love with a knight errant instead in the space of half a day. He didn’t even consider whether a murderess about to hang for her crimes might not do whatever it took to escape that. He didn’t question anything.

She whispered sweet nothings to him after, telling him she wished they’d had longer but at least they had gotten an hour, and that there was no better last request she could have made. She couldn’t give him time to think, because Remi was, in his own way, a good man. That meant he wanted to continue to think of himself as a good man. Sleeping with his lord’s wife was a betrayal of his duty. Sleeping with a condemned murderer was even worse. She painted him as Lancelot, instead, and said he should rescue her not just because he loved her and she loved him, but for the sake of everyone – could Remi let Athos kill an innocent woman, however unwittingly, and stain his soul by doing so? Could Remi really watch her hang?

He could not, of course. He promised to cut her down the moment the others believed her dead. Anne wasn’t sure how well he could judge it, since there had been only three hangings near Pinon in Remi’s lifetime, but it was the best option she had. He might be able to revive her if she wasn’t left hanging for too long. If Athos and the priest stayed to see her buried, though, she was dead. Even if he cut her down she might well wake up underground, a ghoulish thought. This gave her a chance, only a chance, and a little one at that.

But when you had nothing but bad options, well, you picked the best of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say the timeline of the hanging is very confusing to me? She looks like she's wearing the same dress, and it's clean and not wrinkled or anything. It's daytime when she killed Thomas and daytime when she gets hanged. The tree is close enough to see from the house. And the phrase "taken from the house and hung from the branch of a tree" makes it sound like those two things happened at the same time. Is it supposed to be the same day? Because if it is, how the hell did she seduce Remi into saving her? Did she just whisper "wanna bang?" in his ear on the way to the tree???


	15. Athos

Athos existed in a sort of strange shadow world in the time following Thomas’s death. Nothing seemed quite real. He didn’t drink, or eat, or sleep, or think. He just existed. It was as if everything was a long way off, and he couldn’t manage to concentrate on anything. The servants rushing about doing things may as well have been ants. The priest’s speeches were like the drone of a mosquito flying past his ear, irritating but meaningless. He could recognise that he felt betrayal, horror, loss, and terrible, choking heartbreak, but he felt oddly detached from those feelings, noticing the pain without really experiencing it.

His guilt and grief over Thomas were the only things that could truly penetrate the haze of blank confusion he was lost in. They felt like a heavy stone pressing down on his chest, breaking his ribs, crushing his heart and lungs and stomach, the pain barely this side of survivable. He could just about manage to cope with his feelings about Thomas’s death, but his brain seemed to be trying to protect him from facing the horror of the rest of it, wrapping him in a protective blanket of distant confusion when he tried to think of Anne, because if Thomas’s death could crush him Anne’s betrayal would pulverise him to nothing at all. His emotions about her were too strong and destructive and so his mind shut off before he could deal with them. Between that odd, awful blankness to his mind, and the stone crushing his chest, Athos couldn’t remember what he should be doing or thinking or feeling at any given moment. So he clung to duty and honour as the only lifeline he had left, trying to follow the steps his father had laid out for him when he was young – justice, responsibility, family.

He could remember his father and brother saying he’d forgotten his duty when he brought Anne home, and it seemed they had been right. Athos had betrayed his family for a lovely smile and a beautiful lie, too enthralled with his own selfish happiness to question any of the peculiarities in Anne’s story. Thomas had questioned them for him. Thomas had not even told Athos of his suspicions, had protected him from that knowledge, waiting to be certain before he came to his brother. And for that, Thomas had died. 

The day before he had entombed his brother, a solemn ceremony punctuated with Catherine’s sobs and the priest’s soft words. Now today he would watch his wife hang. It was his duty to do so, his duty to seek justice for his brother, and he had failed Thomas so utterly in every other way that he couldn’t falter in the last service he could ever give him. But even with that protective fog blocking out the true awfulness of the situation, it would be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

Seeing Thomas’s body on the floor, burying him, mourning him – those should be more difficult, Athos knew. Punishing his killer shouldn’t be the worst of it, the part that sent him reeling, the part that made the whole world seem strange and broken and wrong. But it was. And he couldn’t tell if he was really doing it as justice for Thomas, or justice for himself, for how thoroughly she’d destroyed him.

Athos had thought it would be hard to keep himself from going to her, that he would be drawn to where he knew she was being kept, desperate to see her just one more time. But instead the very thought made his throat close up and his stomach revolt. Whenever it crossed his mind to go to her, the horror and betrayal and heartbreak of it all seemed able to touch him through the haze, and he shied away from facing the terrible pain of it. He couldn’t confront her again. The last time had all but ruined him. He’d read the letter and then he’d read the rest of it, he knew exactly what she was, he knew that there was no Anne, and that there never had been, only a cold-blooded temptress and murderess, but standing there looking at her and hearing her pleas had still made him feel like he was being slowly torn to pieces.

In a strange way, it felt like she had murdered his wife as well as his brother, casually tearing apart the pretence he had loved with one violent act, and he found that murder even more unforgivable. Looking at her had felt like looking at the corpse of his wife, her face a mask worn by a monster. It was difficult to try and comprehend that instead of being destroyed, his wife had never existed at all. There was no Anne. Athos had been in love with a lie, a cruel pretence, and he’d never even known it. He’d shared every part of his soul with her – every idle thought, every little shame, every fear and hope, all of it spilling out of him when he was with her. And his love for her, God, he had never shut up about that, proclaiming his adoration for her incessantly. He had loved her so intensely it had almost seemed a religion, and she had proved a false god. Every bit of love he gave had simply been something for her to use to get what she wanted.

He had laid himself bare before her heart and soul, believing it was mutual, and nothing she said or did in response had been real. Perhaps she had even thought his infatuation with her pathetic, unmanly, as humiliating as Thomas had sometimes implied. Anne de Breuil knew him better than any other human being ever could or ever would, and he didn’t know the slightest thing about her except that she was greedy, murderous, and the best liar in the world. He had thought his wife sweet, pure, honest, a beautiful soul. None of that was true. The way they had laughed together, the way they had comforted each other, the way they had kissed, all of it had been plays put on for an audience of one. He had been a pathetic, lovesick fool. 

Looking at her as she pleaded for him to believe her, throwing any words she could at him to try and obtain her freedom, he had finally understood. His brother was dead, and his wife had never existed at all, a phantom made up of his own dreams and naivety and someone else’s clever, cruel lies. There was nothing to believe in anymore. In that moment he had wanted the pretence back so badly that he wished he could offer a trade: whatever money or status she wanted, please, if only she would be Anne forever, because he loved Anne, and was utterly lost without her. All he would have to do to have her back was force himself to believe her when she claimed she loved him. But even in that desperate moment, the thought had disgusted him. He might be a pathetic fool, but he would not embrace a lie. That was the one way he would not disgrace himself. He had nothing left but the shreds of his honour – his family was gone, his life was over, any hope of love or happiness was dead, but he could do this one thing, he could see justice done. The desire for that lie had shamed him, though, sickened him, even. It was why he had told her to prepare for her death – he needed to have her executed soon, before he broke down entirely and lost the last little bit of himself that remained in his desperate longing for a woman who wasn’t real.

It was as he heard her last claim of loving him that the fog of numbness started to truly set in – it was one thing to try and deal with the pain of what she’d done, what she was, but his mind would shatter if he thought about how badly he yearned for her despite knowing all of that. He was still in pain, but the true pain was distant and out-of-focus, and he would deal with it later. For now, he let hours pass without notice, staring at nothing, dealing with nothing, the papers Thomas had acquired spread before him on his desk like an accusation.

“My lord?”

Athos looked up blindly from the picture of Anne before him – no, not Anne, one of her other names. It seemed she had more names than dresses. The drawing was good, even though it was simple, it captured some of her spirit in a way the portrait of her hadn’t quite managed. He should burn it, he knew, along with the rest of the information Thomas had found, just so he could stop looking at it and torturing himself. Perhaps he should burn everything, every place he ever shared a moment with Anne, wipe away the memories like that. Once they were gone, he was sure he would be able to think again, be able to face the world again.

“What?” he said to the servant, unaware his voice came out as more of a choked growl.

It was Anne’s maid, Kitty. On some level he registered her red eyes and tear-stained face, but it was irrelevant, like so many things were. “May I…” the maid squeaked, nearly losing her nerve. “May I take my lady a fresh dress? See to her comfort? I haven’t been able to… since it happened…”

A fresh dress to die in, now there was a thought. He hadn’t realised no one had taken her something new to wear, but he had a vague memory of ordering the men guarding her not to let anyone see her or speak to her, and to ignore her themselves. Everything was vague right now, but he thought that had happened, because he could remember why he’d done it. Her words were beautiful, poisonous lies, after all, and he would let no one else suffer them as he had done.

“Leave her be,” he said now, too roughly, and the maid curtseyed and fled with a choked-off sob. If Anne – not Anne, but he didn’t have another name for her, or rather, he had too many – anyway, if _she_ wanted to look lovely as she died, perhaps he should give her that, but really, what did it matter? The prettiest dress in the world wouldn’t change anything – no matter what she wore, she would still be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and she would still have a soul blackened and rotted through. Let her die looking exactly as she had when she’d murdered his brother. Perhaps that would help remind him why he was doing this, why he _should_ be doing this.

He sat back down and stared at the drawing again blankly. Drawn by the servant of a baron, a baron who’d had Anne as a mistress for some time, who had been lied to and stolen from just as he had. But the baron had lost artwork, and Athos had lost his brother and his soul, so it was not really comparable. Even his numbness couldn’t prevent him from feeling a pang of unreasoning, furious jealousy at the thought of another man having Anne, knowing her like that, touching her in the ways he had. He had never thought to really question her virtue. On their wedding night it had seemed natural that they were amazing together, making love without any effort or discomfort or awkwardness, instinctively knowing how to please each other – everything between them had always been natural and easy, after all. Why would he question it? And over the past year he had simply thought her to be exploring the passion between them the way he was – now he knew that what he had taken for eagerness and imagination had in fact been experience, that she had merely been running through a series of practiced bedroom tricks to hold his attention and keep his mind clouded by lust. Everything they had done she had done with men before, perhaps lots of them, and she had cared just as little for them as she had for him or for her art-collecting baron. He had been one amongst many victims of her seduction techniques.

He didn’t know how long he stared at it, but eventually he got up, walked to the fire, and threw the drawing in. The other papers followed quickly. He had already memorised most of the contents, but at least he could stop refreshing his memory. It felt like prodding at a wound, the sharpness of it dispelling his weary, numb haze, and if he kept doing it perhaps he would lose that protective fog completely. Probably he deserved the pain, deserved to keep torturing himself, but if he felt this in all its horror, he didn’t know what he would do next, only that he would regret it. For a moment his hand closed over the locket around his neck. He paused, then took it off, holding it above the fire and almost idly considering dropping it in. The metal would blacken instead of burn, but the flower would probably shrivel to nothing, and with it maybe the memory of her face as she’d spoken of pressing it for him. She’d asked him to swear that nothing would come between them, but he knew now that there never was a ‘them’ to come between, and the pain was unspeakable when he let himself think of that. He tried to force himself to let go, to allow the locket drop into the flames.

“My lord?” This time it was Planchet, face grave. “They’re ready, my lord.”

He nodded, feeling as if Planchet spoke to him from a great distance, and turned to go. The locket was still in his hand. There was no way to burn that memory away, and it was dishonesty to pretend he could. Maybe he could try and erase from his mind the exact truth of what she was – names, dates, crimes, all of that. They were nothing but words, and words could fade. But the memory of her smile, her voice, how terribly and completely he loved her, those wouldn’t disappear until he himself was gone, and maybe not even then. Just like the memory of her standing over his brother’s body, hand bloody and face imploring, could never be removed. The detachment was beginning to lift, he thought, and he wanted it back nearly as desperately as he wanted his Anne back.

He rode alone to the tree, although a part of him wanted to watch from the safe distance of the house, or even not watch at all. He wasn’t sure why he’d told them to hang her here – had some savage, dark part of him wanted to shove her lies in her face? Or was it a continuation of his old imaginings of them being buried there together? His own motives were a mystery to him. His plans were even more a mystery. How could he watch her die then go back to the home they’d shared?

Athos knew why he had insisted no one else be there, though. Just him, the priest and the hangman. It was the same reason why he had sent a message to Catherine making it clear that it would be inappropriate for a lady like her to attend a hanging, why he had wanted Remi to be the hangman instead of a stranger. A few of the servants might watch from the house, he supposed, but from this distance, they would not be able to see much. He wanted no one at Anne’s hanging who hated her. The priest would forgive her, Remi would see her out of the world as painlessly as he could, and Athos would witness her death as the only farewell he could bring himself to give. A final respect to the woman he loved, the woman who had never existed – no one here would triumph over her death.

Did he hate her? He should, he knew. He was trying to. Perhaps in time he would. He was angry, he knew that much, it was seething somewhere deep inside him, not yet ready to boil over but close to. But right now nothing had really sunk in, not entirely. Whenever he allowed his mind to touch on the pain of it, he was torn apart with grief, guilt, fury and heartbreak, ruined by this confused and horrified agony. But he was trying so hard not to concentrate or to think, and when he managed that, the rest of the world was a long way off, and his own feelings were just as distant. He thought it would get a great deal worse when he had time to process it all. It was like he had been sliced open – he recognised there was a wound, he could feel it to some extent, but the pain hadn’t yet fully arrived. When it did, perhaps the shock of it would kill him.

Anne was beautiful. She didn’t look exactly as she had when she killed Thomas, and he couldn’t remember now why he had thought it would help if she did, his mind was so vague and confused. There was no blood on her hands, she must have washed it off, and her hair was pulled back to make way for the noose. There was also no softness to her face anymore, no pleading. She stared at him with the scornful condemnation of an angel judging humanity. Once upon a time, he believed she was an angel, her beauty lit by the sun as she turned to look at him, a gentle smile curving her lips. Now he knew she was nothing of the kind.

He didn’t ride closer. He could hear the priest’s words, but Anne said nothing, and her gaze did not move from him. She was holding flowers in her hand. Perhaps Remi had fetched them for her. He supposed he was holding flowers as well, in a way, since he still held the locket.

Athos made himself split the scene up instead of seeing the whole of it, breaking what he saw into parts of a puzzle he wouldn’t let his mind assemble. Instead of recognising this as a hanging, he registered random, small, unconnected parts: there was rope, and flowers, and a tree, and Anne’s gaze on his face, and her white dress fluttering just a little in the wind. The rope was tied into a noose, but he didn’t let himself see it as a noose, didn’t let himself connect that with her standing on the cart. Remi was taking the flowers away, was binding her hands, but that was unrelated as well, and he let himself look down and away for a moment to study the ground instead of her. Her eyes never left him, though. The noose slipped over her head and he pretended it was nothing but a necklace. It was the same as the haze of numbness he had depended on so completely since Thomas’s death. Just as he refused to really process what Anne had done, he would not let his mind process what he was doing, the decision he had made in his hurt and anger – and for justice, of course. Surely it was for justice, for his brother. Surely he couldn’t be doing it just because of his own pain.

Remi over looked at him, waiting for some sign, and Athos nodded and did not think about what he was signalling for Remi to do, because if he did he would not be able to do it. The cart rolled away. The rope tightened and creaked. Anne gasped. He looked away to the side, then pulled at the reins, because if he kept watching he’d go mad with horror instead of just feeling this dull confusion, because no numbness could stand against the sight of his wife choking on the end of a rope.

He rode blindly, urging the horse to speed so he could leave as quickly as possible. If he couldn’t see it, he didn’t have to deal with it, but he could still hear the creaking of the rope and he couldn’t deal with that either, he couldn’t deal with any of this. Then he was lost anyway: the scene came together in his memory with horrifying suddenness as he rode away. Anne was being hanged, choking, in pain, suffering, and he’d seen the rope go taut, and he’d seen the look in her eyes. Anne was dying, all her light and wit and beauty being replaced by a hollow shell, and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see it, because it was still happening. And he rode, and he kept riding, kept fleeing, but the image wouldn’t go away, and something in him was breaking. He knew suddenly that there was no turning back, in more than one way – no matter how quickly he turned the horse around and galloped back to the tree, by now the life would’ve been choked out of her completely, and the last sight Anne would have had was his back as he rode away, abandoning her to her fate, not even brave enough to watch what he’d done. And there was nothing he could do to change that. Nothing he could do to change any of it now.

He tried desperately not think, not to let himself feel, but he couldn’t keep his mind blank, not anymore. Anne’s locket was grasped in his fist. Anne’s green gaze was emblazoned across his vision. Anne’s pleading voice filled his ears. There was no avoiding it, however quickly he rode away, however desperately he grasped for the numbness: Anne was all around him, Anne was all there was.

Anne was dead. Anne was dead, Anne was dead, Anne was dead. Anne had never existed at all. Anne was _dead_.

He didn’t dismount so much as he fell from his horse. He didn’t know what direction he’d been riding in, just away from the house and away from her. He also didn’t know how far he’d ridden, but the tree was out of sight, not that it mattered when he could see nothing else. He threw up on the ground. There was nothing but bile and air to throw up – he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten or drunk – but it went on for some time. Then he slumped on the ground, retching gradually turning to weeping. Hoarse sobs that felt like they were clawed from his soul tore out of him, his body ached as if he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life, and his throat felt as though the rope was around him and it was tightening. The pain he’d been trying so hard to block out was suddenly raw and agonising and unavoidable, Anne’s face all he could see. There was no end to the pain, no end to the fury, no end to the loss. He staggered back to his horse and somehow pulled himself onto it, curling forward as if around a stab wound, and let the horse carry him home.

The second he got back, he pulled open a bottle of wine. He’d always liked the taste of wine, often he and Anne would share a bottle in the evening, a nice way to finish off a day together. He didn’t taste this one. He’d never drunk one down so quickly in his life, half-choking on it as he forced it into his stomach. He hadn’t eaten in days. He nearly retched again as he finished it, stomach objecting to its sudden fullness, but he forced himself to keep it down, grabbing another, praying for drunkenness to reach him quickly.

The numb haze had been unpleasant, but it was a million times better than the reality of his pain and grief. Anne was a liar, Anne was a killer, and worst of all, Anne was _gone_ , and that was because of him. If he couldn’t block out that knowledge by himself, perhaps alcohol could do it for him. He would do anything at all if it would blur her face in his mind.


	16. Anne

Long before there was a woman named Anne, there was a master thief named Clarik, and she lived with a man named Sarazin.

If Charlotte died of sickness along with her mother, Madeleine died with the priest she had seduced. It was barely a mile from the convent that they met with Sarazin and his people, and less than a minute into that meeting that Sarazin slit the man’s throat. Clarik half-expected the same, but Sarazin let her live. He could recognise talent when he saw it, he told her, and he liked talent. He liked ruthlessness even more. The way she’d coldly led the priest to his death showed both.

Clarik hadn’t exactly planned for the man to die, in fact she hadn’t really considered the matter one way or the other, but she nodded anyway, going along with it. She did a lot of that in her time with Sarazin.

Sarazin quickly came to view her as his masterpiece. When he taught her lockpicking, she learnt so quickly that she was better than him within weeks. She could move through a house soundlessly. With her little potions and soaked white handkerchiefs, it was easy for her to knock out guards or servants whenever it proved necessary. And if her picks or her potions couldn’t get her access to somewhere, Clarik found that a flirtatious smile worked wonders. She took the refined accent she’d learnt from Lady Edith and the seductive skills she’d learnt from growing up in the brothel and put them to good use, persuading man after man to let her into his home. Her body quickly became something she viewed only as a tool or a weapon, but it was very effective as both, which she thought was all that mattered. Sarazin gloated about her, showed her off to other men, and was fiercely possessive of her skills. On the rare occasions their group worked with others, he kept a jealous eye on her – not to check if they were mistreating her, or to stop her sleeping with anyone else, but to make sure no one got any ideas about taking Clarik with them after the job. She would work for him or no one. In his view, all of her skills belonged to him.

She was pretty and young, which was all it took to be Sarazin’s type, so she often shared his bed as well. She didn’t particularly want to, but she never told him no. Sarazin’s moods changed at the drop of a hat, and often the only things that kept him from erupting into violence were wine, women and work. It was best to keep him well supplied with all three, and sometimes when they were on a score, there were no girls around for him to hire. She considered it to be just another part of the job, although not one she enjoyed. She enjoyed it even less that he occasionally expected her to perform the same services for his men when he thought they’d earned a reward. It made her feel cheap in a way that seducing rich men did not – not because of the relative wealth of the men involved, but because when she was using someone she felt like she was the one with the power, but when Sarazin lent her out she remembered she had none.

Apart from that, Clarik found she enjoyed the work, for the most part. There was a feeling of triumph in every picked lock or stolen prize. She relished her own skills, her own intelligence, her own persuasiveness. Even the danger just added to the thrill of it. She didn’t like the idea of murdering people to rob them, but as luck would have it, she was never really asked to. That was Sarazin’s favourite part of the job, and if he came up with a scheme that required a body count, he was more than happy for him and his men to deal with the ugliest parts. Clarik specialized in subtlety.

She still left behind a body count over the years, of course, but none of them could be described as murders. In fact, most of them were acts of self-defence against Sarazin’s men, who were always trying to take out the competition in the endless rounds of backstabbing and power plays that dominated his little fiefdom. It humiliated the men to be forced to listen to and sometimes even obey someone like her: young, impertinent, and worst of all, female. Man after man tried to remove or take the jumped-up little slattern who had somehow gained Sarazin’s favour, and man after man perished by hidden knife, and later by hidden pistol as well. Clarik never hesitated and she was never merciful. She was a survivor. She was making a name for herself and making a fortune along with it.

Over the years, though, Sarazin’s volatility became more of a problem. He thought he ruled Paris’s underworld, and he wanted bigger scores to prove it. The jobs became more dangerous and more likely to end in failure. Sarazin himself grew tenser, angrier, his mood swings now all but guaranteed to end in violence or some other inventive cruelty. Sometimes he took that anger out on his men, sometimes on his girls, but more and more often he took it out on Clarik. Perhaps he was threatened by the woman as he had not been by the girl. People in the underworld respected Clarik, her reputation growing as she brought back score after score, and gradually she became confident and even smug. Sarazin couldn’t stand that. In his mind, he was the success story, not her – she was a well-trained animal and he was her skilful handler. She had no right to be proud, and he did his best to beat it out of her.

It would have been one thing if she could have grown used to his violence, if there was a pattern to it. But no one could ever entirely predict Sarazin. One moment he would be patting her head like a beloved pet, and the next he would wrench at her hair until she cried out in pain. She couldn’t sleep properly because he would burst in on her at any time of day or night, dangerously enraged, ranting about some slight from a month ago or a failed job from a year ago. When he showed her off to people now he would slide insults in there as well, cruel, dark little comments that drew blood, and if she reacted he would punish her for the disrespect. In private he would deliver worse insults, and often hurt her, but sometimes he was also so completely friendly and affectionate that she could never tell where a meeting with him was heading. Clarik started flinching at noises, started hiding in corners.

It came to a head when Clarik was arrested. She was going to be tried a week after her arrest. She waited five days in the prison, enduring beatings, starvation, and worse, but Sarazin didn’t show up. Instead, she had to seduce a jailer, securing her own release. She walked out of the prison with her nose in the air and was streets away within minutes, heading to their hideout, when suddenly she paused.

She tried to picture what was likely to await her inside, and found it impossible. If she’d pre-empted some kind of plan Sarazin had to get her out of there, he might be annoyed and humiliated, feeling she’d shown him up. Alternatively, he might be thrilled to see her, and call on all of his people to recognise what a prize she was, what skills he’d managed to drum into her. Then again his mind might still be on the job – there was no way she could have avoided capture, but Sarazin wouldn’t see it that way, and he was certainly capable of taking out his disappointment on her in front of everyone. Clarik stood stock still on the street, suddenly sure that whatever awaited her inside, she wanted no part of it.

She had a stockpile of money and jewels – Clarik was no fool – and it was the work of moments to retrieve it. It wouldn’t be safe to stay in Paris once Sarazin realised she was free and hadn’t returned to him, so it was time to get out.

Clarik avoided Paris as much as possible for the next few years, only making quick stops when necessary. Instead, she moved between smaller towns, adopting and discarding names continually. She kept herself afloat with pickpocketing and minor robbery at first, then when she saw an opportunity to become a rich man’s mistress, she took it, inveigling herself in his life with just a few shy looks and a sad tale about her late husband. The money she got from him she used on nicer dresses, and the brief time she spent attending his parties gave her a better idea of how to keep up her genteel façade, so after that affair ended she sought out more.

She found that to men, a woman travelling alone was not only considered less respectable, but less deserving of any kind of decency, so sometimes she would persuade a man to work with her by blackmail or bribery. A ‘brother’ or ‘cousin’ from a reputable family made all the difference to her schemes. In some ways the lifestyle was even more unstable than the one she’d had while working for Sarazin, because at least then she’d usually known where she’d be sleeping every night, but there was much less casual violence and she was normally treated with a gratifying amount of respect. She didn’t regret leaving for a moment.

Anne knew that she would have to return to Paris, now, but she couldn’t stand the thought of returning to Sarazin. If she had riches and connections he might treat her as an equal, but if she came back shamed and weakened he would never let her go, and his treatment of her would be even worse than when she went by the name Clarik. It made her shudder to think of living with that kind of fear, abuse and exploitation again. Stealing was fine. Sarazin was not.

It would be hard to go to Paris without falling back under his power, but she had no other options. In Paris, she had contacts, she knew the streets, she could become lost in the crowds, and she could survive. A smaller place was too great a risk right now. With some money in her pocket, a few fancy dresses, her weapons and belongings, and a plan, Anne could go anywhere, but she had none of those things. Instead, she had a temporary hiding place in a tumbled-down shack outside Pinon, a grass-stained white dress, a few scattered coins, and two rusty daggers.

She also had a raw, livid wound stretching across her throat. 

Remi had revived her as promised. Anne had come back to herself, each gasp of air feeling horrifically painful as it passed through her damaged throat but amazing as it reached her starving lungs. She had been too weak to walk, too weak even to stand, but from a distance that would only add to the perception that all he took away was her dead body. The priest and any servants who’d watched from the house no doubt thought Remi had taken her corpse to bury at a crossroad somewhere, which was the tradition for criminals as well as suicides. Instead, he had dragged her to this old shack, letting her lie here and recover her strength. It had been used by trappers once and was little more than a sloping roof and a trough of rainwater. The floor was hard and blankets Remi brought her were rough, but she was alive, and that was all that mattered.

Remi came by every day with food and water. The first few days, he’d been gentle and solicitous, rubbing cream on her wounded throat, stroking her hair back from her eyes. But Anne’s voice was as bruised and painful as her neck, and she couldn’t use her words to guide his thoughts if she couldn’t speak easily. Her body was useful distraction, but that hurt as well, and while she tried to hide her flinches she didn’t always manage it. She could feel Remi getting more paranoid and angry by the day. In his mind, the story had ended with her rescue – he didn’t know how to keep going after that. By the sixth day, he was muttering to himself, pacing, worrying that Athos would find out, that Athos would know. By the seventh, he was wondering aloud if he shouldn’t have saved her, and all Anne could do was fill her eyes with tears and look heartbroken until he apologised, shamefaced.

When he came by on the eighth day, he was drunk.

“Should tell him,” he slurred, throwing half a loaf of bread at her. “Should just tell him. Got tricked by a whore, just like he did.”

“Remi,” Anne tried to say, but her voice was cracked and wrecked and she winced as she forced the word out.

“What do you want, _my lady_?” he asked, sneering at her. The expression didn’t suit his face at all, especially not with the despair mixed in. “Haven’t you already taken everything? He’s gonna kill me. He’s gonna find out and kill me. I should tell him first…”

Remi had always been a gentle man, but now he was swimming in a cocktail of guilt and fear and paranoia and wine, the experience tainting him and twisting him. She could almost predict the transformation. She’d seen men change like this before when their lives failed to match their expectations, the way they let themselves become less and less, the way they dwindled to nothing but the most repugnant parts of themselves. In her experience, men lived a lie, their honour and goodness being only a self-delusion. When that illusion began to break down there was nothing left but the disgusting truth. She had thought that Athos was an exception to that, but it turned out the only difference was that he lied to himself better. A man might choose a woman above many things, but never above his own high opinion of himself, and now Remi was questioning his own rightness there was no telling what he would do to justify his actions or reverse them.

She tried to stroke along his cheek anyway, tried to calm him, and he sent her flying with a blow of his arm. Anne slumped to the floor, pain radiating through her, trying to breathe. She pictured herself stabbing Remi in the throat, every detail perfectly clear and very tempting, but she didn’t do it. It would be too suspicious, for one thing. 

Remi started sobbing after that, alternately cursing her and apologising to her, talking crudely about what he’d given up to share her bed, calling her a murderess and worse in one breath and then calling her his lady in the next. His vitriol was alarming, his remorse even more so, and his words started to revolve around Athos – what he owed Athos, how he’d lied to Athos, how Athos would find out.

That was when she knew it was time to leave. Ideally she would have waited longer, healed more. Going anywhere with her voice a croak and the marks of a hanging bright on her pale skin would be a challenge. She still felt weak enough that the idea of riding a horse was daunting, and she would need to ride if she wanted to get to Paris quickly. But even if she could keep Remi under control for now, she knew she couldn’t stay much longer. She was only miles from Athos, and if Remi broke and told him, or if he found out some other way, she needed to be as far away as possible.

The thought of Athos frightened her, fear and rage feeding each other until the emotions felt so strong she was almost amazed her body could hold them in. She imagined him discovering her, dreamt of it every night, pictured him holding a rope and that expression of finality he’d worn as he sentenced her. At first she thought she would kill him before he found her, letting loose the rage inside her with one thrust of a knife, but she seemed unable. Every time she thought of slipping into the house and slitting his throat, that unreasoning fear would slam through her, leaving her gasping painfully, feeling like she was choking on a rope all over again. The indifference in his eyes as he gave that little nod of permission to Remi haunted her. She wasn’t sure if she feared killing him, or feared him killing her, or just feared the emotions that might overcome her if she looked into his eyes again. But Anne had loved Athos, and he was still her weakest point, and she seemed incapable of fixing that at present.

She would need to become capable of it. None of the people she had been – not Charlotte, not Madeleine, not Clarik, not Antoinette or Marie or any of the others, and especially not Anne – were cold and hard enough to kill Athos. The next person she was would have to be able to do that. Then she could come back and destroy everything here, destroy everyone, wipe away the past until no memory of her heartbreak existed.

Anne de Breuil was dead. That was the sentencing, hung by the neck until dead. And Athos was always honourable, always honest, so if he said Anne was dead, she must be so.

She thought about the drunken contempt in Remi’s voice when he called her my lady, and how she no longer deserved to be addressed like that, since she was no longer Comtesse. She thought about the way Catherine had always looked down her nose at her, thought of the patronising speeches about what it meant to be a lady. She thought about the long months in love with Athos, how even though she’d spent all the other seasons with him as well, all her memories of him seemed to be drenched in summer sunshine. She thought about the way her blood had turned to ice when he refused to believe her.

Milady de Winter didn’t sound like a real name, but then, Clarik hadn’t been a real name either, and people had still learnt to respect it. Milady decided that this name wouldn’t be one that people respected – it would be one that people feared.

She walked so she nearly reached the next village on the way to Paris, then spent the night hiding beneath a row of bushes, shivering and dirty. Before dawn she found her way into the town, using the single blanket she’d brought as a ragged cloak and hood, and managed to steal two plain dresses, a coin purse, and a horse – it seemed her old skills hadn’t decayed too much.

Paris was only a day’s ride away. She knew a few places she could lay low there, but she couldn’t stay in any of them for long. Paris was not kind to the homeless. After she ran out her welcome, which would happen quickly, there was nothing but a fathomless void when she pictured her future. She would end up in a brothel, perhaps, or in the gutter begging, or in prison for some petty theft. Or worst of all, back in Sarazin’s clutches, being thoroughly punished for her abandonment of him. Whatever happened, though, she would survive it, and come out stronger for the experience. That was all she wanted, now, to be strong. She wanted the woman who had loved so excessively and so stupidly to disappear entirely, so that her heart would stop hurting, so the rage and fear and pain would stop coursing through her blood like poison.

Milady ripped a strip off the dirty blanket and tied it around her neck, doing her best to make it look like a scarf. She wouldn’t be able to speak without people noticing something was wrong with her, but at least they couldn’t see it with a glance. Her own feelings about the harsh red line she tried not to examine. Her beauty was something she had always depended on, and now it was marred. Worse than that, it was distinctive, making her easy to recognise. But neither of those thoughts bothered her as much as thinking that it was the only thing Athos had left her with besides a stained dress she would have to discard soon.

She was halfway to Paris when she realised that the field she was riding through was dotted with forget-me-nots. She pulled the horse to a stop, bent her head to press her face to its mane, and sobbed until every gasp was pure agony for her raw throat, and then she sobbed some more. She cried because of Thomas, who had been a fool and had deserved to die, but who she had not deserved to have to kill. She cried because of Pinon, a village she had walked through a hundred times, now filled with people who would cross themselves when they spoke of her. She cried because of Catherine, who was probably even now planning her wedding to Athos, thinking the world righted. She cried because of Remi, who had hanged her and revived her, and never understood what he was doing either time. She cried because of Athos, who couldn’t believe Thomas was a monster, who couldn’t believe Anne loved him, and who would spend the rest of his life claiming he’d done the right thing, and never realising what he’d destroyed.

Most of all, though, she cried for herself. She cried because Anne had thought herself a cynic, but had fallen in love, and had forgotten to be cynical. She cried because she had let herself like and love and trust, and the only thing it had led to was her death. She cried because she finally understood the world, all of it, earth and heaven and hell and men’s hearts, and Anne had been cynical, but she had never been cynical enough, because it was all so much worse than she could ever have known when she cared about no one but herself. 

Milady cried, mourning the girl who picked flowers, mourning the life that was lost, the trust, the hope, the love; mourning that there was nothing left to save or left to live for, aware she had to live on anyway.

And then Milady stopped, and cleaned her face, and rode to Paris, leaving her grief behind in the field of flowers.


	17. Athos

If the days after Thomas’s death had been a haze, in was nothing compared to the blurriness of the weeks following Anne’s. Athos woke up and drank until he passed out, and then when he came back to consciousness, he drank again. At some point he fired all the servants – he could vaguely recall screaming at them to get out, and then doing it again when they came back, then yet again. Eventually, they must have believed him, for they stopped coming.

He spoke to Anne when she appeared to him, and sometimes Thomas as well. It seemed like they were in every room, laughing and talking, arguing and yelling, killing and dying. Thomas appeared much less often, but that was because Anne was omnipresent, even when he couldn’t see her clearly – every time he turned her expected to find her standing there. The echoes of her laughter chased him from room to room and sometimes he swore he could see the swish of white skirts disappearing through a door, Anne moving just a little too quickly for him to catch her. He never went into the room he’d shared with Anne, though, or the room where she’d killed Thomas. No matter how much he drank, he couldn’t bring himself to face either.

Catherine came by one day and he simply left the doors locked, drinking himself into a stupor behind them. Her voice was unpleasantly shrill, he thought, but he couldn’t pay enough attention to process any more than that.

It was unlikely he’d run out of wine – their cellars were extensive. He could’ve stayed drunk forever, but for one thing – and that was that sometimes, even when he drank until he should have long since passed out, thoughts flew into his mind.

Or rather, one thought, singular. _Anne is dead._

The thought was like being shot, every time, only more painful. Thomas was dead too, of course, and he mourned and missed him, but it couldn’t compare to the agony of Anne being dead, and he knew she was dead even though she was simultaneously everywhere. And it was his fault. He could have prevented Anne’s death – he could not have prevented Thomas’s. Not unless he had never met Anne, never loved her, never married her, and those thoughts were just as unthinkable as her being dead. Anne’s death, though: Anne’s death he had ordered himself. Anne was dead, and he had done it, for all that someone else’s hands had tied the noose.

When he thought that, there was no amount of alcohol that could stop it from repeating, from growing louder until it deafened him. He needed to sober up slightly instead, so he could fight back the thought with another one – _I had no choice_. He was sure this was true. Of course he’d had no choice. His brother was dead on the floor. It was his duty to see that Thomas’s murderer was punished. And it was so clear she was a murderer, despite all her desperate pleas to the contrary – she was a thief, and a liar, and she had destroyed Athos utterly with her cruel pretence of love, so a murder was hardly a stretch, and entirely within her character. She had told him more lies than truths, she had destroyed his world and his soul; and yet he still loved her, and he still mourned her, and every time he struggled his way to consciousness, his hand was grasping the locket she’d given him.

One morning he woke and found that her portrait had been cut with a knife, not removed, exactly, but cut half down so that her face was no longer visible. He had no memory of doing it, but he had often thought of how badly he wanted it to stop staring at him, so it was good he had dealt with it. Or it should be good. He wished it felt good. But as he’d once told her, he didn’t need a picture to see her – the memory of Thomas had already begun to blur slightly in small ways, but not all the alcohol in the world could dull his memory of Anne.

The next morning, he woke holding one of Thomas’s pistols.

This time, he could remember the chain of thought that had led to that point. He had downed a bottle of wine too quickly and ended up throwing it up, and as a result hadn’t been quite as drunk as he’d wanted to be. He’d been just sober enough to remember an hour that he’d spent with Anne in perfect clarity, going over every word they’d spoken, every kiss they’d exchanged, and the pain, the sorrow, and the grief had been unimaginable. That was when he’d realised he couldn’t do this anymore, that he couldn’t live while Anne was dead, that he was done.

He’d passed out before he could do anything irreversible, but now he felt ashamed at how close he’d come. It was a mortal sin – but then, so was murder, and he felt like he’d murdered Anne, so he wasn’t sure if that mattered to him anymore. But if he killed himself as well, wouldn’t that be like he was trying to escape what he’d done, trying to hide from it instead of facing it? It felt like it would be a mercy. It also felt like it would be a betrayal, though, like he was so desperate to wipe all traces of Anne from the world that he would even destroy himself to do it. And even if Anne had been a lie, she had been a lie he loved, and he couldn’t stand the thought of that love being gone entirely. 

Athos knew he needed to do something. He realised, with some surprise, that he was more sober than he’d been in a while. He must have been asleep some time. It meant he could think almost coherently.

This place was killing him. Would kill him, if he stayed. That much was clear. There were ghosts in every room, and one of the ghosts was his. He thought about honour and duty – Anne had died for his, and that meant he couldn’t abandon them, not now. But he couldn’t do his duty to be the Comte de la Fère anymore. That would mean staying here, in the home he had shared with Anne and Thomas. He couldn’t do his duty to the villagers, either, because he would remember running around the village with Thomas as children, or walking through it arm in arm with his wife. Everything the Comte needed to do was tied to his brother and wife. Even worse, there was his duty to continue the line, and that was out of the question – even the thought of touching another woman filled him with horror. He had touched perfection, even if it was a perfect lie, and now anything else would be a disgusting travesty. Even a loveless marriage would still be a marriage, and he could not marry again – wherever Anne was, heaven or hell, she was his wife. Would always be his wife. Marrying another would make him a liar as well. So doing the duty his father had laid out for him was impossible.

What other duty could he find?

Well, there were other duties that even his father had considered just as important as being Comte, he knew. To God, for one. But a life of religious contemplation would have too much time to think and too little wine for him to handle. He was also not sure what he believed any more, and no Order would take on a man who spoke heresy, even if it was caused by grief.

There was his duty to France, as well. He could be a soldier. That sounded more appealing. Soldiers were expected to drink a lot, and there was a high chance of receiving an honourable death in the line of duty, which would solve all of his problems. He probably had the skills, as well, provided he could find his swords. He hadn’t practiced since his world fell apart, but two decades of daily sword drills and sparring could not be forgotten that quickly. He was a decent shot, as well, no sharpshooter, but good enough. He was probably a little bit older than most who joined the army, but surely they would take him anyway.

There were no horses in the stables – he supposed that was a good thing, since he’d hardly have remembered to feed or care for them. Perhaps the groom had sold them. It hardly mattered. He could walk to wherever he needed to go. He had no idea how you joined the army or where they were stationed now, but some part of it would probably be in Paris. If not, there would be some other profession there based around shooting people and dying young, he thought. He drank some of the wine without really noticing, then forced himself to slow down. He had no intention of being sober, but he couldn’t afford to be blind drunk either, not if he was going to get out of here.

Amazingly, there was still food in the kitchens. He’d been aware of that while drunk, since he occasionally stumbled down there to stuff something in his mouth before continuing his binge, but for the first time the meaning of that really registered. For a second he wondered if he’d spent less time drunk than he imagined, but then he realised that someone must have been stopping by to leave food for him. Further investigation revealed some of the items on the table were the pies the innkeeper’s daughter made, so likely it was Bertrand. He took the food, wrapping it in a cloth for travel, and left a few livres onto the table as a final thanks for the man.

By the standards of nobility, he’d never carried much in the way of money. He supposed he could try and find some valuables to take, or even speak to his people in Rouen to retrieve some of his income from the estate, but he didn’t want to. Easier by far just to take a few coins and starve if he needed to. Then he thought for a moment about the possibility of running out of wine, and made sure to grab enough wine bottles to last him to Paris. It made his pack extremely heavy, but it would lighten over time. If he didn’t find any employment in Paris he could always come back – except the thought of returning already made him feel sick, and he hadn’t even managed to leave yet.

The journey to Paris was slow. He found he shook uncontrollably the first night and realised he was drinking too little now to satisfy his body, but still forced himself to remain relatively sober. The next day he stopped at an inn and overpaid them for a room, and spent the next four days shaking and seeing things that weren’t there, until he no longer felt like he would die if he did not down a bottle immediately. The hallucinations were terrible because they were all of Anne. But also amazing, because they were all of Anne, and they felt realer even than the ghosts at la Fère.

By the time he reached Paris, he was still a long way from being functional, but he was no longer the wine-soaked mess he’d been, so he counted that as a victory. There was a recruiter in Paris, as it turned out – they sent off a group of new soldiers to the main army every few weeks. Athos shot a few targets, sparred with a few men, rode a horse, answered a few short questions with even shorter answers, and was immediately and enthusiastically accepted, but before he could sign anything a man who’d been watching from a distance drew him aside. Judging by the way the recruiters deferred to him, he was someone important.

“You’re very good with a sword,” the man remarked. “You ride very well, too.”

“Yes,” Athos said, and fell silent again.

“Have you ever considered trying for a commission with the Musketeers?” the man said. “I’m Treville, the Captain.”

“Musketeers?” Athos tried to focus. “Never heard of them.”

To his surprise, Treville gave a short laugh at that. “We’ve only been around for a few years – if you’re from the country, perhaps you missed the announcement. My point is, you’d be wasted on the regular army. I can’t promise you a place in the Musketeers, but it’s worth considering -”

“Is it more or less dangerous than joining the army?” Athos wondered.

“At present, probably more,” Treville admitted, a little awkwardly. “The army is currently decamped, but my men receive missions -” 

“I’m in, then,” Athos said immediately, earning a look of concern from the Captain.

He was given his commission long before he started to run out of money. To his surprise, the Captain seemed to genuinely like him, despite how little he said and how much he drank. He was very good at being a Musketeer, better than he thought he could be. People he interrogated or questioned responded instinctively to the air of command he retained from his days as a comte. People he apprehended became nervous in the presence of a man who completely ignored any threat to his own life. And whenever he needed to fight, he did so with barely restrained savagery, fighting like he was fighting his own ghosts. Put together, it made him incredibly effective.

The men Athos worked with could be very irritating, though. He was always being asked questions he refused to answer. People wanted to bond with him, to befriend him, even. The ones who didn’t want that tended to resent him, finding that his cynicism, his reckless disregard for his own safety, and his constant drinking wore on them. When he made plans, they tended to be unconventional, and most professional soldiers hated and feared the unexpected. So while the other men grew to admire him – for reasons he couldn’t quite understand – they also seemed almost frightened of him.

Eventually, Treville reassigned him to work primarily with two other men, Porthos and Aramis. They’d been working with each other long enough that they were the best of friends, and while they didn’t treat Athos as an outsider, they also didn’t overwhelm him with queries or overtures of friendship. If he spoke, they listened and responded, but otherwise they just let him be.

He found that he started to appreciate their company. They were very skilled, very enthusiastic, and willing to think outside the box, which was a rarity. Aramis had been a soldier since a young age and was never shy about contributing to plans. Porthos was a bit less open about himself, but soon turned out to have a surprising amount of intelligence and insight hidden behind his boisterous personality. They were good company in their own way, easily laughing and talking, never offended by his sarcasm or by his silence. He saved their lives a few times, they saved his a few more, and after a while he found himself drinking with them instead of by himself some nights. They lived together, rode together, fought together, drank together, and Athos found that he didn’t mind it. Sometimes he could put Anne out of his mind for as much as several minutes.

Most of the time, though, she was a constant. It was like the sound of his horse’s hooves beat out her name wherever they travelled. When he drank far too much, he found himself having conversations with her, imaginary conversations where he raged or wept or begged forgiveness. When he drank too little, he ran over old memories in his mind, cursed his own stupidity, cursed her cruelty, tried to untangle the ways in which she’d destroyed him.

He spent a lot of time going through what had happened, poisoned by distrust, doubting every moment from the first time he’d seen her. Had he always been her target? Was it a deliberate trap right from the start? Or, worse, had it been a trap for his father, the original person invited to that party? A middle-aged widower would probably have seemed an ideal victim to someone like her, easy to seduce with her youth and beauty. But then, the party had been full of men like that. She could have taken her pick of them. Instead, she’d picked Athos. He hated himself for falling for it and for her – but he couldn’t undo it, and worse, he didn’t want to undo it. The thing he really wanted to undo was her death. He despised himself for caring less about his brother’s murder than about the execution of his murderess, but he did.

It was his duty to see justice done for Thomas, but in the darkest, lowest part of his soul he thought he would throw away duty to have her back. And even if it was his duty, was that really the reason he’d done it, in his heart? Or was it his own fury and betrayal that made him want to wipe her from the world, like doing so could wipe away the way she’d broken him? He could have handed her over to a magistrate somewhere, probably to end up executed anyway, perhaps to be branded or whipped or sent to rot in jail, but either way not by his hand or on his head. If he had done that, maybe she would have been able to sell her lies, maybe she would have survived. Or he could even have done what some nobles would have done purely in order to hush up the scandal – stashed her in a room at the estate with a minder, told the world his wife was weak or ill, the death of Thomas a tragic accident. When he thought about that, it became a disgusting, cruel sort of fantasy, the thought of her always close by and in his power for the rest of their lives. Surely even that revolting scenario would be better than her dead, though. He felt like most of him had died with her.

And he dreamt of her nearly every night, terrible aching dreams, no matter how much or little he drank.

Sometimes the dreams were sunlit and beautiful, _she_ was sunlit and beautiful, and they laughed and ran together in meadows made of clouds and flowers. The best parts of his marriage played over and over in his sleeping mind. He felt again the excessive happiness of falling in love with her, the nervousness he felt proposing to her, the amazement he felt when she said yes. He laughed with her, he walked with her, he chased her through meadows, he held her close. If there was a heaven for him, it was in those dreams, where he couldn’t remember how they ended, only how they began.

When he woke from these, the moment of realisation was even worse than his omnipresent hangover. Anne was dead and gone, and every single one of those memories was a lie, and so the dreams were lies as well. He redoubled his efforts to pick apart every moment they had shared, trying to shred it into nothing, but that had no effect on the dreams. In his waking hours he could assign every disgusting motive to Anne, he could imagine the worst of her, he could allow himself to view those memories with cynical revulsion, but when his sleeping mind revisited them it was with a raw clarity of emotion that destroyed every attempt to turn the memories into something sordid and humiliating. When he dreamt, he saw Anne the way that he had seen her at the time, with a sheen of perfection. In the hazy moments between sleep and waking he would reach out for her, to pull her close and bury his face in her hair or neck the way he used to when he woke, and when he remembered she would never be there again he felt as if he’d been gutted, every time.

Other dreams of her _were_ sordid, but not in a way to do with her deceit and her manipulations – when he thought (very unwillingly) of sex, Anne was what sprung into his mind. And no matter how much he wished his body was made of stone and indifference, he was still flesh and blood, and he still _wanted_. Always Anne, always, only Anne. She had carved out a home in not just his mind or heart but in the rest of his body as well. A couple of years into his commission he tried to erase her from his system with an interested woman in a tavern but ended up backing away before her lips even touched his. Aramis was there and didn’t comment on his rather-horrified retreat at the time, but later asked in his rather jovial way, “Already have someone special, do you?” Athos gave a grunt that could mean anything, and Aramis didn’t press the question, seeming to take it as confirmation.

It was repulsive and sick, having hot dreams about a woman he’d killed, he knew that, just as it was sick that he still couldn’t keep her out of his head when he touched himself. But just like the brightly-lit scenes of happiness that played while he slept, he couldn’t manage to stop the sweet, earthy dreams he had of Anne, whatever he did. Sometimes he was sure that nostalgia and hopeless, unfulfilled desire was polishing his memory of her into something even more perfect than reality. The image of her in his mind was so unnaturally beautiful, the pleasure he remembered so impossibly fierce, the two of them together so passionately _right_ , that in his new cynicism he wondered if anything that amazing could really exist on this earth. The dreams made a mockery of any small pleasure he could find by himself, and in a secret, shameful corner of his mind, he knew that despite the perversity of it he never wanted them to stop. If that meant waking a couple of times a week uncomfortable, frustrated and filled with a crushing sense of shame, so be it.

The last kind of dreams were the worst, and also the most common. In them, he watched her die.

It didn’t matter that he’d turned away. In the dreams, he could see her thrashing against the rope, see her horror, her disgrace, her suffering. He watched her beloved face swell and turn purple. He watched her flailing gradually give way to a horrifying stillness. He watched, and he did nothing, and his own pain was unimaginable. But sometimes instead of grief, his dream-self felt a dark, sick sense of satisfaction as he watched her die – in real life, he had been broken beyond repair by her death, but the version of himself he dreamt of often exulted in it, rage finally satisfied. It existed when he was awake as well, that anger and hatred – it was buried deep under the grief and self-recrimination, but he could feel it burning inside him anyway. He could take it out on a thousand enemies in a thousand fights, but it wouldn’t disappear. There was nowhere to put it, after all, no one to yell at or reprove, because the person he was angry at was dead by his hand. He hated and despised a dead woman, but he loved her and missed her as well, and he grieved her so strongly that he was almost incapacitated by it at times, and the mix of all the strong emotions together was toxic and unbearably painful.

And so in his dreams he either revelled or suffered, depending on the night, and both were awful. When he woke he threw up his wine, or wept in total silence, or lay there empty and staring at the ceiling. Occasionally he thrashed and yelled himself awake, heartbeat pounding painfully in his chest. Once or twice he woke with tears already on his face, and realised that he’d been crying in his sleep. 

“All right?” Aramis said one night as they were camping out on the way to a new mission, in response to Athos crying out as he woke up. Porthos gave a little shake of his head, warning him back, but Aramis ignored it.

Athos normally managed to keep his response to his dreams quiet, but he doubted this was the first time Aramis or Porthos had noticed that his sleep was uneasy. He raised a hand to his face and found it wet. “Fine,” he said shortly.

They didn’t ask anything else. Aramis returned to poking the fire, Porthos to playing with his set of cards. Athos could feel the silence, though, in a way he normally couldn’t. Unaccountably, he felt as if he owed them something, some kind of explanation, these men who had given him friendship and comradery when he was so hollow he could give nothing back.

“The someone special I had,” he said gruffly, after five minutes of quiet. Somehow he knew Aramis would remember his grunted response to the question asked almost a year ago. “She died.”

“Oh,” Aramis said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’ll get better, yeah?” Porthos said, the trite sentiment redeemed by the real sympathy and understanding in his voice.

Athos knew that both of them had lost people as well, but surely not in the same way. Their grief was clean, untainted by horrible guilt, frustrated desire, uncontrollable anger, or any of the other emotions that ate him up from the inside. Still, he found he didn’t want to correct them, to explain his foolishness or his culpability. They thought well of him, as strange as that was. He wanted them to keep thinking well of him.

Instead, he picked up the nearest bottle – he always had a few nearby – and drained it. The alcohol had no effect on the dreams except to make them less clear, but right now, that was worth drinking anything.


	18. Anne

It was a few months after Milady de Winter’s return to Paris that she entered the employ of the Cardinal.

There was an event on at the Louvre, and the streets outside were thronged with poor people, each fighting for a share of the gutter. When the nobles left, some of the more charitably minded ones would throw out coins, and it was best to be prepared. Milady had easily achieved a space, but she wasn’t looking for coins – she had carefully smudged one cheek with dirt, ripped her dress artfully, and put her hair into just enough disarray. She’d made sure that she didn’t look like a drunkard, with her wide eyes and pouting lips, but instead like a beautiful young lady in some distress. She thought there was decent chance a man might stop his carriage to check on her and perhaps more.

The past months had been difficult – she had very little money, she was wanted for a variety of small crimes, and Sarazin’s requests for her return were getting increasingly forceful and violent. However well she hid, his men kept finding her. Luckily, her throat had fully healed now, only an easily-hidden scar remaining. It was time to begin aiming for larger game. 

“Clarik?” A hand landed on her shoulder just as the first of the carriages came down the street, and she cursed her bad luck.

“Leave or die,” she said, just loudly enough for the man to hear her.

“Can’t do that. Sarazin wants a word with you.”

She turned her head slowly. The man wasn’t alone, unfortunately – he had two companions. She didn’t recognise any of them from her days with Sarazin, but he did tend to run through henchmen quickly these days. Yet another reason not to return. By now the streets were thick with carriages, but that wouldn’t prevent them from stabbing her, she was sure.

Coins flew around her and people cheered, but Milady didn’t try and grab for any of them. Instead, as the man gripped her upper arm and dragged her out of the crowd, she grasped surreptitiously at her hidden weapons. She didn’t notice a man in one of the carriages gesture to his guards and open the door. His sharp eyes had caught what the men hadn’t, and he was intrigued.

The moment they were in the alleyway, Milady jerked up her hand, stabbing the man holding her through the heart without hesitation. The second man got a bullet. The third, stunned, fumbled as he tried to draw his weapon. Milady de Winter, unruffled but exuding slight irritation, sauntered towards him, casually bringing her blade to his throat. She reached forward with her other hand and removed his gun. He closed his eyes.

“Tell Sarazin there is no Clarik anymore,” she told him with a softness that was far more terrifying than any shouted words could be. “I am Milady de Winter, now, and I am not his creature, whatever he thinks.”

The man nodded, and when she gave a dismissive gesture, he fled. Then Milady turned at the sound of slow clapping.

“Impressive,” the Cardinal said. He had two guards with him, and Milady immediately discarded any thoughts of escaping. She could recognise the cool shrewdness in the man’s eyes, and the sudden thought occurred to her that she wanted to be as seemingly ice-cold as he was. “You caught my attention back there, you know, even before they went for you.”

Milady found herself approaching him, almost against her will.

He raised one cool hand to the un-smudged side of her face. “You did this yourself,” he noted. “The torn dress as well. I can recognise bait when I see it. Trying to seduce a man, rob him, or kill him?”

“I’m adaptable,” Milady said.

“Indeed,” he said thoughtfully.

Milady knew of Cardinal Richelieu. Everyone knew of the Cardinal, even if only by reputation. He was the most powerful man in Paris, even more so than the King in some ways. If there was any connection that would ensure Sarazin never dared to come near her again, it was him. “As you just heard, I’m in need of a new patron,” she said with feigned unconcern, batting her eyelashes at him. “I feel like you would be a generous one, my lord.”

“I already have a mistress,” he said, but he was still studying her. Milady could see a kind of lust in his expression, but there was nothing hot about it – it was too calculating for that. It wasn’t lust for her body as much as her skill. She could use it just the same.

“As I said, I’m adaptable,” she said, with a slow, sultry smile.

The step from thief and seductress to assassin and spy was far simpler than she expected it to be. She already had most of the required skills, after all. It was nothing to her to break into a man’s house in the dead of night, or to flirt her way into a select party, or to pick the locks on a box of secret papers, or to persuade a target to follow her to somewhere isolated.

In her spare time, she looked into poisons, expanding her repertoire from potions that incapacitated to ones that killed, and it proved easy as well – after all, the most difficult thing with the sleeping potions had always been ensuring the right dosage, and when you killed a man, dosage was much less important. There were many poisons in the world, and many herbalists willing to share information about those poisons. Her experience mixing up drugs served her well when it came to making poisons. She could kill a man with the scratch of a needle or the tiniest addition to his soup.

At first, she found that it bothered her, killing the defenceless. However much they deserved it – and nearly all of her victims did – it made her feel sick. That feeling angered her more than anything. She was determined to burn any weakness out of herself. If she hesitated to kill even people she despised, how could she possibly ever kill someone she had loved? And no matter how she felt about him, Athos had to die. She couldn’t imagine any other way to quiet the storm of absolute fury that existed inside her. She could hold it back, most times, the pain and anger of it all, but it burst out of her sometimes in wild rages that humiliated and shamed her. Gradually, she learnt to release it for little savage moments, like when she slit the throats of sleeping men, allowing her to remain in complete control the rest of the time. Over the next couple of years, death stopped having any real weight to her. It happened too often to seem significant. Blood was just one more thing to have cleaned from her clothes.

She took a dark kind of satisfaction from how much Athos would disapprove. She was now exactly what he’d thought her, a cold-blooded murderess, even if it was technically in the service of France.

The Cardinal was the best patron she’d ever had. He trusted her as far as people in their business trusted anyone. He allowed her to use her own methods, and rarely questioned them. He spoke to her respectfully, for the most part, and didn’t even object to her occasional snide commentary or criticism. Now that he was her patron and she was under his protection, she could utilise all her old contacts, the ones who Sarazin would have found her through and used against her before. She gave them her new name, Milady de Winter, and she gave them forget-me-nots as her signature.

She hadn’t intended to, but it was yet another sign of her weakness. The emotions that overtook her whenever she caught the scent of the flowers were impossible to suppress. Their whole house had smelt of them, and the scent took her back there whenever she came near them. They had signified so many things to Anne – hope, happiness, and above all, love.

So she twisted them into her new identity, that of the treacherous Milady de Winter, to twist the meaning of them as well, so that they came to mean nothing to her but betrayal. She betrayed everyone except the Cardinal, killing men who stared at her lovesick, slitting the throats of lords as they slept, peddling in deadly information passed over as pillow talk, hiring fools for disgusting tasks and then disposing of them or hanging them out to dry afterwards if it was necessary. What better signature for a woman like her than a symbol of complete, heartbreaking betrayal, even if no one else knew enough to know what the initial betrayal that inspired it was? Whenever the scent took her back, Milady remembered the feel of the rope around her neck, and she gave out the same cruel indifference she had been shown to her targets.

It was three years into her service with the Cardinal when she had a mission that would take her close to Pinon on the way. Without really examining her own motives, Milady added two days to her estimate of the time it would take to complete the task. The Cardinal didn’t question it – why would he? He probably thought she was just being cautious, taking extra time to set up another suspect for the killing, something like that. She was a model employee and had never failed him.

Instead, she stopped by Pinon. It took her longer than it should have, since she avoided going anywhere near the house or the field or the tree, but eventually she got there. She came through in the dead of night and stole into Remi’s smithy, still unwilling to examine her reasons for doing so.

Remi was drunk – messily so – and looked like nothing so much as his own corpse. She suppressed her instinctive disgust as she looked down at him, poking him awake with her shoe, blade at the ready in case he made her use it.

“My lady?” he managed eventually.

“Remi,” she said. “I see you’ve been enjoying yourself. Tell me, how’s my husband these days?”

She knew what she would hear, she’d prepared herself for it. Athos would have remarried, had children, and moved on with his life, not caring that to the best of his knowledge she rotted in the ground. If he’d married Catherine, she would kill the bitch when she killed him, Milady knew. If it was someone else, she hadn’t quite decided. She would make that choice in the moment. She’d half-considered going straight to the house, but she told herself that any good assassin did their research before taking action – she refused to admit that she was procrastinating out of fear.

“In Paris,” Remi slurred eventually. “Joined the Musketeers, apparently. Got seen there last year by Pierre’s boy.”

“Paris?” Milady blinked, shocked. 

Remi’s red, veined face started to convulse as he began sobbing. “But he’ll come back, won’t he? Won’t he? He’ll come back and he’ll kill me ‘cause of what I did, and it was all your fault, and you shoulda died…” 

He wept for a long time, and then he threatened her with horrible, revolting things he wanted to do to her, and then he wept some more and spewed paranoia about Athos murdering him, and Milady listened with barely half of her attention until he passed out. The only interesting titbits were that Athos had apparently spent the time between her death and him leaving as a drunken wreck, and that her had not returned to his home or even acknowledged its existence in the past couple of years.

Athos with the Musketeers? Absurd. Milady was vaguely aware of the Musketeers as a force – they had grown in authority and autonomy over the past few years, and Richelieu was beginning to take disapproving notice – but she’d never looked into them closely. Now she knew she would have to learn everything about them, everything about her husband’s position with them. She couldn’t believe he’d been in the same city as her and she’d been unaware. Her body felt alive with fear, need, anger, love and hate all together as she thought about it, and she was left breathless and confused by her response.

But… he hadn’t married Catherine. He hadn’t simply returned to the life that she’d interrupted. Instead, he’d abandoned everything, going from a lord to a soldier, ignoring all the duties he had carried out so conscientiously during their marriage. Was this a reaction to Thomas’s death? Or did he also suffer from their past like it was a disease, rotting from the inside out with anger and pain and futile love? She would be happy to release him from that, if that were the case.

Milady de Winter stared at Remi’s passed-out form, and considered killing him where he lay. Judging by the look of him, it would be a mercy stroke more than anything. But there was something that stopped her, some brightly-lit memory of walking past his shop arm in arm with her husband. Remi was a disgusting drunk, a twisted mockery of the sweet young man who had stared at her so admiringly. But it seemed even a twisted mockery of the past held too much value for her to simply excise it. She couldn’t manage to slit his throat, and eventually she turned and left.

On the way out she avoided all the same places as on the way in. The tree, the meadow, and especially the house – she should do something to it at least, now that it was empty, but her heart started racing to the point of pain whenever she tried to consider it. She was forced to admit that she wasn’t any more capable of destroying the house right now than she was of killing Remi. The past held her too tightly, no matter what she did. The memories clawed her open and left her raw and vulnerable. She hated it.

It was shaming to admit to herself that she wasn’t quite strong enough to destroy the past yet. But she would continue to work at it, and in time she would be. She would watch Athos choke on his own blood as he cursed her, the impotent hatred in his eyes finally laying her own anger to rest. She would watch the home they had shared burn. She swore it to herself as she rode away. She had to. It was the only way to survive.

Before there was an assassin named Milady de Winter, there was a woman named Anne de Breuil de la Fère, and she lived in a kind of waking dream.

It was a beautiful dream, and a beautiful life, and overall a beautiful lie, and while Milady never quite managed to shed any of her identities completely, Anne held on with more force than any other. She was hanged, but she didn’t die. And when Milady de Winter rode away from Pinon that day, it was with the full knowledge that she would return, because Anne was still not dead, because Anne would never die, and because Anne’s broken heart still beat in her chest.

And someday, she would have her revenge for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! The depressing, angsty ending that was promised. This is probably the only time I've successfully managed a non-happy ending in something I've written, and that's purely because it's pre-series and so has a set ending. I'm going to miss writing this, it was fun.


End file.
